Quad4B

Mac Viruses are coming to get us!!!

2011-05-16T11:43:00.003-04:00

John Gruber has a great post that gives a little bit of insight into where Malware is on the mac today.

We start in 2004 with the following post:

Eric Hellweg, MIT Technology Review, October 2004: “Hackers Target Apple? Congratulations!”:

The Apple community has, since its inception, been largely immune to nefarious hackers bent on spreading harm. If you are a Windows user, as I am, you know the routine. You complain about the latest spyware or virus attack, and Apple devotees respond with good-natured teasing — they don’t have worry about such nonsense. Well, now they do.

Predictably, posts on various Apple-related message boards have been offering varying levels of concern, ranging from mild disappointment to utter gloom. I think this reaction is fundamentally misguided. MAC users should not be upset about this malware news; they should rejoice.

Keep reading Gruber's post to see a series of post leading to today.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says

2011-05-12T09:55:00.000-04:00

CORUSCANT — Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.
In a late-night appearance in the East Room of the Imperial Palace, Lord Vader declared that “justice has been done” as he disclosed that agents of the Imperial Army and stormtroopers of the 501st Legion had finally cornered Kenobi, one of the leaders of the Jedi rebellion, who had eluded the Empire for nearly two decades. Imperial officials said Kenobi resisted and was cut down by Lord Vader's own lightsaber. He was later dumped out of an airlock.

Priceless!

Try to have a sense of humour when working with customers

2010-02-27T14:27:00.004-05:00

Some guy (wasn't me, really) contacted Kitchen Aid to get support for a Chef's Chopper which had a stuck blade. It was on a Saturday - so it's pretty cool they offered chat support...only problem is they have no sense of humour. Shouldn't that be a prerequisite when dealing with customers? Note that names have been changed to protect the guilty, or something...

What's your problem?
Appliance Owner Dude: I can't get the blade out of the Chopper.
Kitchen Aid Girl: Thank you for contacting KitchenAid! My name is Kitchen Aid Girl. I will be with you momentarily.
Kitchen Aid Girl: You take the lid off the food chopper first, then the multi-purpose blade pulls straight up.
Appliance Owner Dude: I tried that - it doesn't work
Appliance Owner Dude: It is really stuck
Appliance Owner Dude: Hello?
Appliance Owner Dude: Laurie?
Kitchen Aid Girl: Yes, I am here.
Appliance Owner Dude: did you get my response?
Kitchen Aid Girl: How long had you just been processing for?
Appliance Owner Dude: Actually, not long. And it's been sitting there for a couple of days as the person who last used it couldn't get tyhe blade out
Kitchen Aid Girl: (I am sorry, there is a slight delay between our answers here).
Appliance Owner Dude: no sweat
Kitchen Aid Girl: Is this for a restaurant or commercial setting?
Appliance Owner Dude: Nope. personal.
Kitchen Aid Girl: The blade should pull straight up. If it is not, then it appears that perhaps the unit was run too long and the friction between the blade and shaft may have seized it together.
Kitchen Aid Girl: Do you know when it was purchased/store information?
Appliance Owner Dude: When I try to lift it, it comes up about an eigth of an inch
Appliance Owner Dude: so there is movement there
Appliance Owner Dude: It was purchased about a month ago - maybe 6 weeks
Appliance Owner Dude: From a store in montreal quebec
Kitchen Aid Girl: Are you located in Canada?
Appliance Owner Dude: Yes I am
Kitchen Aid Girl: For information regarding KitchenAid Countertop Appliances and assistance in Canada, please contact the following representative:

KitchenAid Canada
6750 Century Ave
Mississagua, ON
Canada L5N 3A7

Or you may view the following website link:

http://www.shop.kitchenaid.ca/

You may also feel free to contact the KitchenAid Canada Customer Service Center by calling (toll-free) 1-800-807-6777, between the hours of 7:30 AM to 8:00 PM, Monday through Friday (ET).

Kitchen Aid Girl: I am sorry for the inconvenience, however we are located in the USA and we do not offer international warranty assistance here.
Appliance Owner Dude: soooooo I can't get this resolved now?
Kitchen Aid Girl: Our Canadian representatives would be happy to assist you further.
Appliance Owner Dude: did I say Canada?
Appliance Owner Dude: I meant, uh, New York
Appliance Owner Dude: That would be in the US
Appliance Owner Dude: :)
Kitchen Aid Girl: If you are located outside the USA please contact our Canadian representative - we do not offer international shipping or assistance from the USA.
Appliance Owner Dude: Did I at least get a smile for that - just trying to inject humour into a dissapointing, unresolved, situation
Appliance Owner Dude: ANyway, have a great weekend (after you get off)
Appliance Owner Dude: Cheers!
Kitchen Aid Girl: Do you think perhaps there is food stuck underneath the blade that may have hardened and making it difficult to remove? You may try adding warm water in the work bowl and let it set.
Kitchen Aid Girl: Take care.
Appliance Owner Dude: Warm water - ahhhh, something to try. I'll do that
Appliance Owner Dude: Bye.
You have disconnected.Kitchen Aid Girl

John Hodgman testing President Obama

2009-06-23T06:53:00.004-04:00

An absolutely hilarious video! It had me ROTFL'ng several times. And by the way the answer to three-part question is Shai-Halud (might have mis-spelt this one), a Thumper, and The Water of Life. And no, I did not look those up. No self-respecting geek, of which I consider myself one, would cheat! I found the video through the Wired article here.

Solar transit of the space shuttle and Hubble telescope

2009-05-18T15:11:00.003-04:00

Only image ever taken of a transit of a space shuttle (Atlantis) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in front of the Sun.

Click on the image to see it full-size. The shuttle and Hubble are in the bottom left corner. To really appreciate this picture, read the photographer's description of how it was taken here.

What Makes Us Happy?

2009-05-12T18:19:00.002-04:00

Read the full text of the study here.

Inspiration versus Motivation

2009-04-22T13:16:00.003-04:00

Having been on management teams who have aspired to motivate staff, versus those who've wanted to inspire, this rings absolutely true to me.

Words I never thought I'd hear from a Secretary of Defense

2009-04-07T12:18:00.002-04:00

I can't improve on his blog post so I'll post it verbatim:

From Robert Gates's press briefing today on the 2010 defense budget:

It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk - or, in effect, to "run up the score" in a capability where the United States is already dominant - is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

Emphasis mine; sentiments his. This has obvious bearing, as Gates made clear, on whether it is worth "running up the score" in an area of current U.S. dominance by buying more F-22s, among other systems. (Previously on the F-22 here and here.) More later on the details and implications of Gates's budget, and whether he'll be systematic in applying the rationale he has laid out. For the moment, the simple logic of his statement is worth noting. As is the sense of shock at hearing something so logical as part of a budget presentation.

Brand America - will it regain its shine?

2009-02-27T09:43:00.004-05:00

Every now and then The Economist holds on-line debates which it includes its readership in. The most recent one was on 'Brand America' and whether it would regain its shine. While I can't share the debate points (there are too many) I can share the results. Click on the image to see a larger more legible version:

The Corpus Clock - Fascinating

2009-02-12T07:48:00.000-05:00

Windows 7 or Linux? You decide.

2009-02-06T07:56:00.001-05:00

Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista

2009-01-29T07:48:00.011-05:00

Windows 7 is the new and improved version of Windows. Microsoft built a version of Windows called 'Vista' that not only kept the viruses out but also protected us from nuclear fallout and biological weapons. Too bad no one could figure out how to use it. Now they're trying again with Windows 7. Each time they change the naming convention for Windows it signals the firing of the previous Windows product manager. Let's see, Windows 3.x, Windows NT, Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 - 7 versions of Windows, 6 product managers without a job. Wait a 'sec...we've forgotten the 'unmentionable' versions of Windows; Me and 98. Looks like there are really 7 product managers looking for jobs - and that the Windows 95 manager was able to release 2 Windows versions before getting canned.

So how does Windows 7 stack up against the epic fail incarnate that is Vista? The guys and gals at xkcd say it best:

Luckily I'm not an Apple fanboy

2009-01-21T20:07:00.001-05:00

...or I might blog about Apple's after-the-bell earnings call. The reported their largest quarter ever, over $10 billion for the first time, in the midst of a recession. There's always room for great products. Although they don't expect their 2nd fiscal quarter to be as strong, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they do better than their competitors.

Which market sectors are doing well in the U.S.?

2009-01-21T19:34:00.007-05:00

The New York Times has a piece about which sectors are growing in the current economy. As someone who's made the (gulp) decision to go into business in the past year, this is of particular interest to me.

The Chevy Volt

2008-11-06T09:24:00.008-05:00

I've been turned off American cars for some time after driving 2 Ford's, owning one, and driving more rental American cars than I can remember. My mom and dad's '83 Thunderbird had all kinds of 'issues' including drive-train problems and a shorting electrical system. The Tempo I owned wouldn't start in cold weather and had an annoying interior rattling that three trips to the dealer didn't fix. Oh, I almost forgot, the second time I took it to the dealership I got the car back with the driver's side electric window no longer working. Ever since then I've driven Hondas and Toyotas.

That could change.

Why the Volt? How does 100mpg and the ability to charge the battery at home sound like? How about the fact that it can go 40 miles on a single charge. And did I mention that it runs entirely off its battery? Its gas engine functions solely as a generator to recharge the battery. All those 10 minute trips to the store will only cost you the electricity it took to charge the battery. In Quebec, with all of its hydro-electric power, that won't be much at all. I'm betting it's going to be a lot cheaper than gas in most parts of the world.

You can read more about it here.

A different president

2008-11-06T08:58:00.005-05:00

The Me Meme

2008-10-07T15:15:00.003-04:00

From Marc:

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

The Apple Macintosh in 1984

2008-08-08T10:04:00.007-04:00

Apple OS X Technology

OK, while I'm not an Apple fanboy I do admire style. Especially when style and function converge. As mentioned in previous posts I'm a long-time PC user - since 1984 coincidentally enough (you'll see why). Actually, I should have said I'm an ex-longtime PC user. I only use a Mac now. Granted I run Vista under VMWare Fusion so I can run MS Project, Rational RequisitePro, Rational Software Modeler, Clearcase and other software engineering tools but those will move to OS X eventually - I'm pretty certain even though IBM hasn't admitted it.

Lately I've been wondering. OK, first disclosure - I am a geek. Hell, I was secretary and president of the computer club in high school over two years. What I'm wondering about though is why did we (the club) buy an IBM PC in '84? We spent $5,000 of funds we raised to purchase a PC with an 8088 processor, monochrome screen, tape drive for data storage, and 68K of RAM. I can remember buying the magazine Computers & Electronics and reading about the Apple II. I'd dream about buying one. But instead we bought a PC? I'd have to blame our computer science teacher Mr. Briante. He made the suggestion / decision (what is it with adults anyway - why can't they butt out of kids lives occasionally? ;-). If I remember correctly it's not like we had a choice. Even though we raised the money :-( In all fairness he was a really good teacher!

Now that I'm an Apple ~~fanboy~~ user I've realized not only how great the Mac is in terms of usability but also how much fun the original Mac would have been to program compared to the monochrome monster that was the IBM PC. First I'd like to introduce you to the '1984' Apple ad for the Macintosh. To really get this you you have to know a bit about George Orwell's book '1984'.

Now take a look at Steve Jobs' first presentation of the Macintosh to the public. For those of you who have functional memories of way back then try to remember the technology we worked with every day. The mainframes. PCs. WordStar anyone? We didn't have PCs in our homes - none of us did. For the younger crowd, $5,000 in 1984 translates to about 10,000 inflation-adjusted dollars.

This machine actually had a speech synthesizer! I'm amazed just looking back on it. What do you think?

MyPhone 3G

2008-07-14T11:36:00.007-04:00

Business Technology

No I am not a fad-following-popular-technology-buying-groupie-apple-fanboy. Yes, I did just get an iPhone 3G and boy I am impressed (if unsurprised)! Above is a screen capture of my phone. Just the fact that you can do a screen capture of anything on your phone with two buttons (Home+Sleep) is very cool (think user manuals for the new enterprise apps companies will be building for internal use). Having been a BlackBerry user for the past three years (and also been a user of the first gen BB years ago) I can say that RIM definitely has something to worry about - sorry Perry. It's not just the sexy design although intelligent design ;-) does have something to do with it. It's the whole enchilada. Physical design combined with the graphical user interface, combined with features, combined with a cornucopia of applications - some of them actually useful!

Having decided that my desktop/laptop platform of choice will be the Mac for the foreseeable future, the iPhone makes a lot of sense. It allows me to keep my contacts and calendar synchronized 'over the air' via a 'push' mechanism. By 'over the air' I mean I do not need to use a USB tether to keep my contacts and calendars synch'd as I did on my iPod touch.

Aside: Being a business owner I have no intention of investing in an e-mail platform. Currently I am a very satisfied user of Google Apps Premiere edition. I pay $50/user/year and have our company domain associated with a Google mail account. Document sharing is included.

Push means that every time I update a contact on my phone it gets sent to my laptop and visa versa. No manual or timed synchronization required!

I am a business technology professional and have had my share of heartache implementing badly conceived commercial software. It has been too long since the first PC was released with MS DOS 1.0 (which I was a happy user of at the time). I expect better from the industry. Microsoft and a lot of other software and hardware companies have had enough time to figure usability out! Apple's products work the way they're supposed to and are far more intuitive than most other vendors' products. That's why I use a Mac and that's why I bought an iPhone. I don't have the time, patience, or willingness to struggle with products to get them to do what I and pretty much the majority of users out there want them to do. I'll take what works thank you very much. I will continue to help my customers struggle with the software/hardware they've chosen - whether it's deserving of their patronage or not - after all that's their prerogative and frankly sometimes there's nothing else out there that does the job better.

I am happy to say that at least on one front, personal productivity tools, there are a number of products available today that are delivering the kind of user experience we all desire. And if business leaders are smart they'll leverage iPhones and iPod Touches to deliver highly user-friendly and efficient applications to factory workers and mobile employees as front-ends to more complex enterprise systems such as ERP, CRM, and business analytics among others.

Hmmm...

2008-06-15T21:27:00.004-04:00

politics

From the June 16th edition of the economist.

The New York Times Website is Way Cool!

2008-05-09T08:27:00.001-04:00

Technology

I don't know if I've just been sleeping and missed someone writing about this but the New York Times has a very, very cool website. First of all, as mentioned in this article, the Times displays very well across different browsers and mobile devices because they hand code the HTML! When almost everyone uses high-level editors like Dreamweaver this is quite a commitment to quality given the extra time they must spend coding.

But what really blew me away today was something that happened as I was reading the Times today. This article was discussing how a US General's planned posting in Pakistan (to lead the fight against Al Qaeda) was cancelled due to his being "excoriated in the Pakistani news media for one of his previous jobs: commander of the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." Excoriated? What the heck does that mean. So, planning to look up the word in my Mac's built-in dictionary I double click on it and...holy cow! A New York Times web page opens in a new browser window with the dictionary definition. Wait a second - I must have clicked something else - it couldn't have been just a double-click! So I tried again. It opened again. Then I started to look for some sign that this was actually a hidden url - couldn't see it - now I haven't opened up the source code - don't have time and personally don't care how it's implemented (JavaScript or maybe via XUL). Then I double-clicked 'Pakistani' in the above sentence and another page opens, this time with both a dictionary definition and a encyclopedic entry. Guys, you have out-done yourselves. I am truly blown away.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how technology should work. Wow! Way Cool!

By the way, I was using Firefox Beta 5 on OS X Leopard.

The fear of hunger

2008-04-19T14:19:00.006-04:00

Politics Society

An article in the Economist makes some alarming claims about the current food shortage in poor and developing countries:

“World agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period,” says Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. To prove it, food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting “We're hungry” forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt's president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. “It's an explosive situation and threatens political stability,” worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d'Ivoire's chamber of commerce.

It looks like long-term concerns may be addressable but then again maybe not. It is certain that short-term food shortages cannot be fixed.

What will be the outcome of this shortage on the many already unstable political regimes of the third world? What of the lives of those who will not be able to buy enough to nourish their families?

A Harvard Neuroscientist's experience with 'mass conciousness'

2008-03-20T07:55:00.001-04:00

Society Science

This is one of the most moving presentations I have seen by a scientist. Part of it is probably due to her talking about her own personal experience. The only other time I can remember being moved to tears (by a scientist) was in watching an interview with Robert Oppenheimer who, after witnessing the first atomic test, quotes, “…now I am become Death [Shiva], the destroyer of worlds,” and then wipes tears from his eyes.

Jill’s presentation was significantly more uplifting.

Great presentations in 4 steps

2008-02-14T17:12:00.003-05:00

Business

PowerPoint is the leading cause of death in companies today.

Male. Female. Young. Old. Makes no difference.

You can make a difference!

Watch this slide show to find out how!

| View | Upload your own

The Economic Downturn

2008-01-31T08:28:00.000-05:00

Economics Politics

There's a saying that 'when America sneezes the world catches a cold'...or something of that sort. The question today with the rise of The East and the strengthening of the European Union is whether or not it still matters (that much) when the U.S. experiences a slowdown? This cartoon says it best.

from The Economist.

Microsoft Office Pricing

2008-01-17T07:34:00.000-05:00

Technology Innovation

I predict that Microsoft will give away or charge under $100 to corporate users of their Office application by YE 2009. Perhaps it will be a downgraded version. Maybe they'll release the full-blown one. I don't know.

As Mac/OS X and Linux increase their market share (inevitable looking at worldwide numbers), Microsoft will be compelled to use their office application to tie users to their ecosystem.

Don't forget they have their success riding on users sticking with Windows. Why? Think of their development platform, .Net, which only runs on Windows. What about SQL Server, Windows Server, Dynamics, Silverlight, Sharepoint, Exchange etc. The reason these are more compelling than competitor products in that they are tightly tied to one another. Office and XP/Vista are the glue. It won't work on anything else. So as other operating systems become more compelling, free/open like Linux or just plain better like OS X and OpenOffice is free and collaboration is getting better and better (and free) on the Internet - who would pay $488 CAN for an office license?

MacWorld Expo 2008 Keynote Address

2008-01-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

OS X technology

Every year, the grand master of all that is Mac, or 'i' - I'm not sure anymore - gets up on stage on January 15th and announces everything that Apple has in store (pun) for the coming year. It's pretty exciting for Mac fanatics (of which I am not one...not at all).

You can find a blow-by-blow account of his Keynote here.

OK, I'm impressed - mostly. Good apps for my iPod Touch - e-mail, google maps, stock ticker, notes - why are these great? Notes will sync with my Mac. E-mail will download e-mails from my accounts and give me a better-than-Web interface in which to compose + will display PDFs, Word, and Excel files. Google Maps is very useful - I use it (in pain) on my Blackberry to find stores, my kids' friends' addresses etc. - frequently enough. But they're charging $20 (come on guys!). Probably to keep iPhone users happy who pay more more more for the phone + $100/month for the service. True that I'm restricted to locations with Wi-Fi only buuut I'll accept that as I'm paying $1,200 less per year...after year...after year.

But here's what I was expecting. Apple TV now offers movies at HD quality with Dolby 5.1. They will sell like there's no tomorrow. At least 50% of Mac owners will buy one and many, many PC owners - those who have iPods and iTunes will buy. You can watch a rental on your Apple TV, sync with your MacBook and iPod and keep watching from where you left off. On any device. Brilliance in usability. Apple makes technology work the way it's supposed to. Amazing.

Finally there's the MacBook Air. Brand new product - not a re-hash of an old one. It's a wedge shape going from .76" to .16". That is amazingly thin! It is so thin Intel had to redesign the physical aspects of their Core 2 Duo to fit the machine's form-factor. I'm impressed. At first blush, though, I don't like the black keyboard. No Ethernet port (802.11n [54Mbps Wi-Fi] though) or optical drive but for ultra-portables that standard fare and acceptable. 3bls, 13.3" display, 5 hours with wireless antenna turned on, 80GB HD, multi-touch trackpad (that will get more and more, uh, traction as time goes on) all @$1,800. Really cool. It's pricey but well in-line with competing PC-based laptops. There is a however here. They are targeting a much smaller market with this laptop. It costs more, closer to the price of a MacBook Pro but has a slower processor, lower memory expansion capability, slower hard drive, 'slower' video card. It makes sense for execs but I think they missed by leaving out the Ethernet port (even if you can buy a usb-Ethernet adapter it will be slower).

That aside, this is what I admire Apple for - they deliver real innovation into the public's hands and they boost their profit margins significantly as they're doing it. Great company!

Literature and Media

2008-01-03T19:46:00.000-05:00

literature movies

Atonement

When my wife asked me what I thought of the book I said, "really good book with an unsatisfying ending". The plot was interesting and well-executed although not the typical kind of book I would read. If I were to sum up the story without recounting it I would have to say it is about the consequences (positive and negative) of the kind of rash actions we all commit. The author takes us to outcomes that would not normally take place but that are believable nonetheless, especially in a country so recently free of war and yet on its way to another. As for the unsatisfying ending? Any of us who have lived long enough are well acquainted with unsatisfying endings. Sometimes it's nice to escape this reality when indulging in a piece of fiction.

Syriana

After having recently watched Rescue Dawn which had an unsatisfying beginning, middle and ending and Letters from Iwo Jima which was a beautifully done movie but quite depressing - worth it nonetheless - Syriana was refreshing. An intelligent set of plots that interweave throughout the film, coming to a satisfying though not particularly cheerful climax. It leaves you with no regrets however and, as my wife put it, it tackles some tough issues (the kind where too many directors would resort to demonizing to bring the point home) in a very mature, complex way. The world is complex and as much as we'd like to simplify it down to one full of angels and demons the truth is we all have a little of both in us.

On the non-fiction side I've been listening to a couple of audiobooks:

Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Caharam, highly recommended business read on managerial/organizational effectiveness. The authors read large portions of the books themselves. Both read and listened to - you'll need to do both if you want to review their recommendations. I find this double-whammy most effective with books where I want to make use of the content.

The Six Sigma Way by Peter S Pande. Excellent overview of Six Sigma. Both read and listened to. Abridged.

The Eight Habit by Stephen Covey. If you liked The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People you'll like this one. As Stephen has matured so has his viewpoint deepened. He reads the entire book himself.

Managing in the Next Society by Peter Drucker. Very interesting read. He has some unique perspectives of what the new millennium holds in store for us in terms of businesses and careers.

The Future Is Not What It Could Be

2007-12-30T17:08:00.000-05:00

Future Society

An article in September's FastCompany talks about why it seems that the future never arrives. Why do the innovations that were dreamed of years ago, such as flying cars, teleportation, moon bases and personal jetpacks not come to fruition? There are two answers to this question though I believe both are related. And, well, maybe some of these ideas (jetpacks?) weren't so great or even possible.

Innovation, or more accurately invention, matters less today then it did 100 years ago. We live in a world today where universities get their funding from corporations - to deliver concrete results and not to come up with new ideas. The days when university researchers worked on expanding human knowledge for the sake of knowledge are over. Universities are now, in businesspeak, 'hotbeds of innovation' or in plain English, 'manufacturers of salable product ideas'. The same is true of large corporations. Businesses can only afford research if it will deliver the next 5-10 years' revenue stream. Research is done today to generate future (but short term) cash. The monopolies of yesteryear were able to 'play' (they could afford to) and so acquire knowledge in ways today's companies cannot. The market economy forces them to be short-term focussed. The average tenure of a CEO - what is it now, 5 years? - forces him or her to focus on the short-term.

What about government? They used to massively fund research and make sure fundamental research was being done. Oh right, I forgot, that's the reason universities have turned to business for funding - government funding for research and education is down. Is is the rising cost of healthcare and other sprawl issues that keeps the government tight or is it the supersizing of government that's draining the coffers?

There should be a base on the moon or mars or a program to harvest minerals from asteroids in place today - or something analogous. Technically it's possible. There could be flying cars but the early years of that industry would be risky. There would be accidents until we got the kinks out of the system.

The truth is we are afraid to invent. It's risky. We may lose our competitive edge temporarily until we can commercialize the R&D. People might get hurt. We would rather remain comfortable in our wars and global economic games. Comfortable as we continue to use up the planet we live on.

There is no time to think about the future. We are too busy living in the present.

What 'sexy' means when we talk about software

2007-12-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

Business Technology

Here's a post I made in response to an article about Enterprise software and its need to be 'sexy'. I don't believe enterprise software needs to look cool and flashy.

I do believe that enterprise software should absolutely be sexy! I am saying this with the understanding that when we say 'sexy' we really mean 'intuitive'. No one cares how 'cool' a piece of software looks if it's unusable and takes drilling down into multiple stacks of menus to accomplish what you want to. We think software is 'cool' and/or 'sexy' when it's easy to use. Everyone wants to spend less of their time learning the ins and outs of [non-intuitive] software and more of their time doing value-add work. We should be able to figure out what we need to do with a combination of a few clicks of the mouse and reading the help. I have been part of a successful SAP implementation and can tell you that it works beautifully. But guess who uses SAP most? The really bright people. The ones who compensate with the difficulty of learning SAP with brute-force intelligence. Not everyone who's using it is highly educated - that's not a slam or insult it's an admission of fact. These are the users that concern me. They are the ones that use the system by wrote, removing any chance that they will use it creatively or spontaneously to solve the real-world problems they face daily. As soon as its use falls outside of their procedural training they will fail. Mistakes will be made. They will not be able to apply common sense or more accurately, their basic problem-solving skills to using it to getting their jobs done.

In my mind, enterprise software has failed completely in this respect. It continues to treat its users, especially those on the plant floor, as industrial-age 'hands' - without valuable insight into the business processes of which they are the true masters. We, and they, are knowledge-workers. I predict that within the decade enterprise software as we know it will be fast on its way out. Within 25 years it will be relegated to the world today's mainframes live in. As the shift from the industrial age to the knowledge age intensifies, so will enterprise software's market share continue to shrink.

Wikipedia looking for donations to expand in 3rd-world countries

2007-10-23T07:39:00.000-04:00

Open Source Society Technology

In this video Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia shows how it's being used in 3rd-world nations and emerging economies. Check it out and if you already use Wikipedia, donate. If you don't use it then start.

We also get to hear a little from the One Laptop per Child project which I've previously written about here.

Nuclear Energy Makes Sense

2007-10-14T10:19:00.000-04:00

Environment Society

Research seems to support the claim that we are faced with Global Warming. Everyone knows that one of the main contributors to greenhouse gasses, principally CO2 or carbon dioxide, is fossil fuels. Chief offenders include transportation (ships, trucks, cars, trains, aircraft) and power generation. As the chart below shows, about 50% of the United State's electricity production comes from coal (2003 numbers), about 20% comes from nuclear, the rest from a mix of renewable, oil, and gas - with the last two also contributing to greenhouse emissions. All in all, 70% of US power is generated by fossil fuels.

In the article, "Global boom in coal power – and emissions" The Christian Science Monitor states:

In the past five years, [the world] has been on a coal-fired binge, bringing new generators online at a rate of better than two per week. That has added some 1 billion tons of new carbon-dioxide emissions that humans pump into the atmosphere each year. Coal-fired power now accounts for nearly a third of human-generated global CO2 emissions.

So what does the future hold? An acceleration of the buildup, according to a Monitor analysis of power-industry data. Despite Kyoto limits on greenhouse gases, the analysis shows that nations will add enough coal-fired capacity in the next five years to create an extra 1.2 billion tons of CO2 per year.

They go on to point out that China is not the only culprit, many other nations including the United States see coal-generated power as the cheapest option available.

An article in the Economist, "Nuclear dawn", makes the argument for nuclear power. With worldwide energy demands (and supply) expected to double in the decades to come, nuclear energy makes sense. The following chart shows the greenhouse gas output of each type of fuel used to generate electricity.

Nuclear wins out by a hefty margin. Over the decades nuclear energy has faced difficulties for numerous reasons.

None of these have to do with either its safety or risk record.

Nuclear power plants do cost billions of dollars to build. Worse, in many countries "delays due to protests or planning problems... have lengthened the construction period and enormously increased costs." This is not true of France who

After the oil crisis of 1973... decided to pursue the goal of fossil-fuel independence. With few energy resources of its own, pursuing nuclear power seemed like the best strategy. All the commercial nuclear plants operating in France today were based on technology devised by Westinghouse, which licensed its PWR design to France in the 1960s. Today the country has 59 nuclear reactors supplying 78% of its electricity.

Once operating, however, these plants use a fraction of the fuel required by other forms of non-renewable energy. The fuel in a single reactor lasts about three years. Uranium is also still in relatively abundant supply with no shortages due on the horizon.

There have been a few accidents. In 2007 a small amount of radioactive material was released into the ocean by one of Japan's reactors due to damage caused by an earthquake. The New York Times reported that "317 gallons of [radioactive water] flowed into the Sea of Japan." Aside from Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl this is one of the worst accidents to ever occur, causing a temporary shutdown of the reactor until it is repaired. We are very emotional about nuclear energy. Perhaps this links back to its use as a weapon both designed and proven as a city-killer, an agent of destruction aimed at civilians like ourselves. Many of us have lived through the cold war where the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. A more rational review of the impact of coal versus nuclear exposes a very different reality. The World Bank reports that,

the environmental cost of coal use [in China] is already beginning to take its toll, particularly through SO2 (Sulphure Dioxide) and NOx (Nitrogen Oxides) emissions which are the leading causes of acid rain. In 2002, about 34 percent (or 6.6 million tons) of China’s SO2 emissions were released from power plants. Acid rain falls on an estimated 30 percent of China’s land mass and can become a threat to agricultural output. China’s CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) emissions, second only to the United States, are also a threat to the global environment.

We don't hear about acid rain any more. It's off our radar screens. We forget about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in which 10.8 million gallons of crude were spilled into the arctic ocean resulting in the death of "250,000–500,000 seabirds, 2,800–5,000 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, as well as the destruction of billions of salmon and herring eggs." On its home page the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited states, "Our technical advisers have attended on-site at 550 spills in 90 countries." How much environmental and economic damage have these spills caused? This is just one organization among many that responds to oil spills - some of them. We also need to consider the environmental impact of strip mining, the cheapest way to extract coal from the earth. Intuitively the environmental cost of coal is far greater than that of uranium given the vastly greater volumes of the carbon fuel that must be extracted per kilowatt of energy produced.

As for nuclear power, the errors of the past need not be repeated.

One of these is the laissé faire attitude taken by politicians with regards to renewable energy. This has to be the long-term goal of any national energy strategy. Nuclear energy is a good stop-gap approach to meeting our short-term needs with minimal negative impact while we search for long-term solutions.

The self-centredness of the western world's approach to just about everything must also change. If global warming has taught us anything it's that the greenhouse gas emissions of developing countries have just as much impact on our environment as what we produce. We need to make sure that new renewal energy technologies are affordable and can and will be adopted by poorer countries. This should be the holy grail renewable energy research.

The other error we have committed is that of letting our vote be dictated by the fear, uncertainty and doubt sown by the media and dare I say the oil/coal industries. We citizens need to make more informed decisions and use our voting power to remove the roadblocks to wider adoption of nuclear power in our nations.

One laptop per child

2007-10-05T10:04:00.000-04:00

Open Source Society Technology

The XO laptop project is one I've been following since it was first conceived of by MIT Professor, Nicholas Negroponte, in January 2005. It intrigued me due to its BHAG or Big Hairy Audacious Goal of creating a laptop that could be sold for $100 and would be appropriate for use in third-world countries. For now it costs $198 but the price will drop as manufacturing is honed. It may never reach $100 but it will come damned close! That alone is amazing!

What makes it so special? It has a battery that lasts for a gazillion hours...well OK, 7 or so, is good for 20,000 recharge cycles (4x your laptop) and costs 10 dollars to replace. It can connect wirelessly (of course) or through a mesh network. The mash allows it to connect with other XO laptops and communicate with them - think truly social networking (within a village for ex.). If just one of them is connected to the Internet they can all connect through this laptop...without any end-user configuration.

That's the beauty of this machine. It connects to everything without you telling it what to do. It's smart. It is also waterproof, can recharge from a $10 solar panel or a crank recharger, is as readable as a newspaper in bright sunlight, can be dropped on a rock with no ill effect and on and on and on.

A truly marvelous device. You can buy one starting November 12th for $400. You get one and a child in a poor country gets one (you also get a tax receipt).

Find out more by watching this excellent video.

or go to this website for details of how to buy one: laptop.org

Employee productivity, quality of life etc.

2007-08-10T08:17:00.000-04:00

Great little article in the Economist this week. Here's an excerpt (well, sort-of):

AMERICANS are hard workers, but not necessarily the most productive, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics. It has compared America's output per worker, and output per hour, with that of other rich countries. The average American worker produced $90,000 of output in 2006, measured at purchasing-power parity. Only Norwegians, some of whom work on oil-rigs, did better. Using output per hour, however, shows a different picture. Employees in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France all churn out more than Americans' $50 an hour. Proof, perhaps, that workers are motivated best by shorter hours and more holidays.

Ouch! Look at Canada - we're not fairing too well are we?

A couple of thoughts. A few years ago I visited IBM's Bromont, Quebec plant where they do semiconductor assembly and testing. We were talking about multiple shifts for plant employees and they said they'd come to the conclusion that the night shift cost more than it delivered due to low productivity and so they canceled it. They now work a maximum two shifts. This is intuitively correct and is supported by my own experiences in a plant environment.

I also have a background in software development process improvement, having implemented various process methodologies dependent on the need. One of the tenets of eXtreme Programming is the 40 hour work week. Here's the rule:

Working overtime sucks the spirit and motivation out of a team. Projects that require overtime to be finished on time will be late no matter what you do. Instead use a release planning meeting to change the project scope or timing. Increasing resources by adding more people is also a bad idea when a project is running late.

Projects that require employees to work more than 35-40 hours/week have been poorly managed. The right amount of tension should have existed from day one - tension being the gap between what is being delivered and what is expected. Too much and it turns into pressure which over a long period of time is energy-draining. The right amount and team feels inspired to work harder and comes to work energized each day.

We are quite critical of Europeans, I know I have been, in the area of economic productivity and competitiveness. If we take our eyes off what we consider to be their 'faults' we might just learn something.

Listen up!

2007-06-08T13:11:00.000-04:00

I have been too busy and my priorities have directed what spare time I had elsewhere but for the following video.

from here

MacBook Installation

2007-02-09T12:52:00.000-05:00

I said I'd write about my install experience so here it is.

Painless. Nothing complicated to figure out. The only difficulty I had was that the Mac didn't automatically configure and connect to my home Wi-Fi network. That would have been just a little difficult for it to do since I'm using a shared key with MAC address filtering. I spent about 2 minutes trying to find the right place to configure this. 2 minutes is not bad considering I haven't touched a Mac since 1991!

I was up and running in 1 hour and that includes the time it took me to find the address, username and password to my Wi-Fi router, find the MAC address for the Mac's card, enter it, install Firefox etc. Not bad! This took far less time then it typically takes me to set up a new Windows machine.

Once I had it up and running I wanted to get Firefox installed. It took me a second to figure out that I had to drag it to the Applications folder but I did remember an article I previously read about this so I had help. Then I had to figure out how to move the 'shortcut' to the Dock. I know my terminology is wrong - I suspect this will take longer to learn then the Mac. I figured that out in about 2 minutes so now I had Firefox on the Dock - did I say that right? 'On the Dock'? Hmm.

Then I installed Google Browser Sync. All of this took about one hour. Then I wrote my first post on the Mac from the Mac.

OK I needed a desktop productivity suite so I installed OpenOffice which was a little more complicated since there's no native OS X version (funny, I never cared until now) and you have to install X11 first. I followed the instructions and downloaded X11 from the Apple website, tried to install and then read the small print: "System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 through 10.3.9". Oops. I'm running 10.4, the X11 version of which is apparently on the install DVD...Which took me about 15 minutes to locate and install. [Dogs! I keep getting messed up with the CTRL-TAB, CTRL-SHIFT-TAB, CTRL-C etc. features of Windows and Mac - different] Then downloading and installing OpenOffice Mac version - all in all about 1/2 hour of work. Then I had to move my iTunes library and some personal file folders to the Mac. I also discovered this really cool feature, "FileVault" which encrypts my home folder. In Windows I had to use TruCrypt which works nicely but not seamlessly. I've also used other encryption technologies like PGP (commercial version) which a) costs too much and b) last time I used the full-disk encryption feature on my laptop, after a few weeks of use it refused to boot. Luckily there's a nifty utility that allows you to decrypt your drive...36 hours later I had my 60GB drive descrypted and could boot. Last time I used that feature! Now I know that Vista has this feature but I'm not testing Vista so for now I don't care.

I never mentioned the packaging. Slick. I'll post some pictures with my next entry.

Dumbing down of America, Part II

2007-02-05T12:50:00.000-05:00

I have refrained from "Bush Bashing" over the years of his presidency and don't intend to do start now. What follows is more an analysis of his thinking then a criticism of him as a person.

I also need to add the caveat that it is pretty evident that the article I am about to reference has a, er shall we say bias against the president as seen in how the author has presented the budget announcement.

A while back I posted on the difficulty young people today have in obtaining a university education in the United States. This article in today's Chicago Tribune outlines the president's plan to increase military spending by 11% or $100B this year and $145B in 2008 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while calling for a reduction in federal education spending from $68B in 2007 to $58B in 2008. Increased spending in defense and reductions in education is another example of this administration's predilection for brawn over brain. It is what has led the US to where they are today (in economic terms never mind political) and why China will take over and the combined power of the east (India, China, etc.) will soon overwhelm the US. The nails in the 'leadership by might' coffin were hammered in by both Perestroika and Globalization. The Cold War's termination ended the justification for Pax Americana. Globalization of auto manufacture ended the Big 3's dominance in automotive manufacture to the point where the US industry is on the brink of collapse. After manufacturing comes knowledge creation. This is what drives the industry 5-10 years, or more, in the future where technology patents and scientific discovery result in new products. It takes time, however, so we don't really know what shift is currently in the works. Although the next 20 years will tell I don't think we should wait for the fait accomplit. Now's the time to invest in the education of our youth.

While I am clearly against the president's plans for the US, the article I've referenced really ticks me off! The budget figures have been presented to manipulate the public to respond negatively to the administration. The author claims military increases of 62%. Once you read on you discover this is compared to the 2001 budget. Then he claims the budget has been increased by $245B only to discover later that $100B is for this year while $145B is for 2008. If you're going to lambaste someone do it honestly and without prejudice or manipulation. Whatever happened to journalistic ethics? Or maybe I'm giving the author too much credit for having real convictions. Maybe it's all about sensationalism and selling newspapers.

Politics Society

Macintosh Review, 1st Post

2007-01-29T21:33:00.000-05:00

I will spend the next year reviewing the Macintosh experience from a PC User's viewpoint. I used a Mac last in 1990/91 and even then not from a user's perspective. I was setting it up to run ad clips at a TV studio. Before and since then I have only used the various versions of DOS, DOS/Windows, and Windows on desktops and laptops. I started with an 8088 IBM PC in 1984/5 and am now on an IBM T60 with 1GB RAM and Windows XP. I'll go into the details of why I am doing this review in a later post.

I unpacked a MacBook Pro this evening (15" version) and got it up and running in an hour (more than average complexity wireless security + wanted to install Firefox and Google browser sync) and am now writing this post from it. I like the way it feels on my lap. Not to heavy but stable. Nice keyboard.

I'll leave it at that for now. In the next post I'll talk about my experience up to now - which basically includes the install. Remember I'm not a Mac user so some of my comments may appear a little daft to those of you who are (or who are smarter than me).

By the way, this is more about OS X then about the hardware platform although I will make some comments on it. I will be writing about usability, stability, support, interoperability, productivity and any other ity's I can think of.

OS+X Technology

Remind Me

2007-01-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

Talking about trying new things, I saw this video referenced on a blog (can't remember which now) and ended up buying the music through iTunes.

Although I am not much one for music videos - don't like them and watch maybe 5 minutes of TV a week - this one from Royksopp really caught my eye. It's one of the most creative I have ever seen.

Entertainment

Try new things. It will keep you young...and make you rich

2007-01-15T07:15:00.000-05:00

As someone approaching middle age, I have been developing a very firm conviction on the importance of trying new things. For me this includes things like learning how to dive, cooking Thai and other interesting cuisine, learning to drive standard and possibly, next year, taking up downhill skiing (haven't tried it yet) so we can go as a family. In the past few years I have also been buying new music and not just music from the eighties, like an album from Shiny Toy Guns. Even more exciting then these is our new Cappuccino machine (try new things, buy new things).

Why? We need new experiences to keep us young in terms of flexibility of thought. I have nothing against and in fact actually like aging. What I would guard against is an aging of mind - not being able to think in new ways. It's also why I read a lot.

Now, apparently, trying new things is also good for your wallet according to a behavioural economist...first time I've heard of that discipline. I still haven't quite figured out how to calculate the ROI of our Cappuccino maker.

Society Finance

PS3 to beat Wii and XBOX 360 in market share

2007-01-02T21:16:00.000-05:00

From an article on playfuls:

One research estimate indicate that "The Sony PlayStation 3 is expected to win the console war in the long term with an install base of around 75 million globally by 2010. The console is not expected to dominate as much as its predecessor, the PS2, due to late launch issues in the PAL region and the early lead of Microsofts Xbox 360."

"Boston-based research firm Yankee Group reported that the game-console war will have found a winner by 2011 and that is PlayStation 3. Xbox 360 will come second and Nintendo Wii third.

The respected market research firm predicted that by 2011, which means 5 years from now, PlayStation 3 will have more than 30 million units sold, Xbox 360 will closely follow with 27 million units and Nintendo will trail the other two giants with its Wii console, with only 11 million units."

Although I know little about Research Markets I do know the Yankee Group. They are heavily used by technology journalists and larger corporations. Their forecast should therefore be impartial as too much is riding on their reputation. Here's an article that further quotes their research.

I'm hoping to get a PS3 for my boys in early 2008...actually they'll be paying for it. I'll be paying for the peripherals like wirless Bluetooth headphones and a 1080p HDTV...

For movie lovers like myself, HDTV coupled with an HD DVD player like the PS3 makes a lot of sense. You get an HD player built into a game console which the kids can use at a cost lower than a standalone player. Conventional wisdom says to wait a year after the PS3's initial release. As was the case with the PS2, when it's first released the technology is too new and game developers are unfamiliar with it. It will take until the second generation of games before they come even close to exploiting the technology. This is especially true of the Cell processor.

Boot Camp - so what?

2007-01-02T21:15:00.000-05:00

This post is really, really late...better late then never. I started it in April...it's been fermenting since then.

I have given a lot of thought to Apple's Boot Camp. It allows owners of newer Macintosh computers (with Intel processors) to install Windows XP or the newer Windows Vista on their Macs. This lets them run Apple's OSX for a Mac "look and feel" with access to Mac software or Microsoft Windows with access to a greater number of Windows programs.

This doesn't at first seem significant as why would Mac owners, who tend to be anti-Microsoft, want to install Windows? The reason is simple. Many Mac owners run Windows at work. Being able to use the home computer for both will be a bonus for them.

However I don't think this is the main audience. They've learned to live without Windows on Mac for many years. However, there are two other classes of users. Those that want to buy Mac but haven't due to one or two programs that don't come installed and those that may buy a Mac because it's cheaper then competing manufacturer's computers.

The first of this second group doesn't require much explanation - they can now buy a Mac and use Windows software they need for work or personal use that is not available for the Mac. The second does but is explained easily. Mac laptops are known for their ergonomic and aesthetic design. An equivalent Windows laptop in terms of quality and design would be Lenovo's Thinkpad T60. So lets compare the Macbook Pro and the T60 to see which comes out on top:

(BTW, what's up with blogger and tables? Scroll down to see the table in this post.)

Lenovo Thinkpad T60, Model

Apple MacBook Pro

Processor: 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Screen: 15.4” WXGA (1400x1050)

Memory: 2GB

Hard Drive: 120GB

CD: 8x CD/DVD RW

Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 128MB

Processor: 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Screen: 1440 x 900 pixels

Memory: 2GB

Hard Drive: 120GB

CD: 6x double-layer SuperDrive (CD/DVD RW)

Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics with 256MB SDRAM

$2,278 USD

$2,499 USD

The price is essentially the same if you consider the cost of the upgraded video card, which just happens to be perfect for Vista. One caveat though, you need to shell out a few hundred dollars for either XP or Vista. Even with the slight cost increase it may push users like myself to try using OSX when I wouldn't have if that's all I could run on it. It will definitely mean my next home computer purchase will be a Mac.

The other piece. OSX is equivalent to Windows Vista Ultimate, an operating system you'll have to shell out $3,99 USD for.

Fusion energy; from probability to possibility

2006-11-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

Science Technology Future

from slashdot: "One of the founders of the US Tokamak fusion program, Dr. Robert W. Bussard, gave a lecture at Google recently now appearing as a Google video titled 'Should Google Go Nuclear?'. In it, he presents his recent breakthrough electrostatic confinement fusion device which, he claims, produced several orders of magnitude higher fusion power than earlier electrostatic confinement devices. According to Bussard, it did so repeatably during several runs until it blew up due to mechanical stress degradation. He's looking for $200M funding, the first million or so of which goes to rebuilding a more robust demonstrator within the first year. He claims the scaling laws are so favorable that the initial full scale reactor would burn boron-11 — the cleanest fusion reaction otherwise unattainable. He has some fairly disturbing things to say in this video, as well as elsewhere, about the US fusion program which he co-founded."

PS3 Adds on YouTube

2006-11-09T07:38:00.000-05:00

Technology

These adds are great. Check them out.

Japan as a nuclear power

2006-10-22T05:51:00.000-04:00

Politics

The Houston Chronicle has an excellent article discussing the merits of Japan becoming a nuclear power. The author writes:

As the only country ever to suffer nuclear attack, Japan obviously has its own reasons to resist the very thought. But now that the lunatic regime next door, which has already overflown Japan with its missiles, has officially gone nuclear, some rethinking is warranted.

Japan is a true anomaly. All the other Great Powers went nuclear decades ago — even the once-and-no-longer great, like France; the wannabe great, like India; and the never-will-be great, like North Korea. There are nukes in the hands of Pakistan, which overnight could turn into an al-Qaida state, and North Korea, a country so cosmically deranged that it reports that the "Dear Leader" shot five holes-in-one in his first time playing golf and also wrote six operas. Yet we are plagued by doubts about Japan joining this club.

I believe the author is right in that, if anyone could be a responsible possessor of nuclear weapons it would be Japan.

There is another paradigm which he has not entertained - that no one is a responsible potential wielder of nuclear weapons. Maybe today's government will be level-headed in a crisis but what about the next. And the next. Human beings have proven themselves unreliable as far as rationality, even sanity is concerned. That's how the world wars began. I am certain another world war is possible. I am certain the use of nuclear weapons is possible. The only solution is de-nuclearization. What does this mean for North Korea? For once I think the US Foreign Policy analysts have got it right. The threat of retaliation from the US will be enough for now while the world continues to pursue a diplomatic, and not a military, solution.

Courage, Loyalty, Humanity, Ruin

2006-10-14T10:52:00.000-04:00

Movies Society

Those four words are my distillation of "The Deer Hunter", one of my favorite movies.

If you haven't seen it, it's about three men, best friends - blue-collar workers in a steel town/smalltown-America in the early 70s who enlist to go to Vietnam. Before they go, one of them gets married and all of them (with other friends) go hunting deer in the mountains. This is significant as De Niro's and Walken's characters are defined by this and a later hunt - I'll skip it though. The story is about the heroism of 'ordinary' guys. Heroism at home (one of them marries a woman who is pregnant by another man - he's never slept with her) and heroism in war. Another is sensitive and romantic and yet manages to fit in with the 'rougher' crowd of the town - you can see what they like about him. He's the most human of them all. This is unfortunately his downfall in Vietnam. The other is the one who is always tough, principled, and 'just' - but not always human.

The movie is long (over three hours) so you have to really be in the mood. It also has some very brutal scenes - but they are brief and exist to bring home what they suffered. No gratuitous violence. There's a lot more I don't want to say or, having already given away much, I'll have given away too much and will spoil the movie.

It does have flaws and is not a perfect movie but it remains one of the best I have ever seen.

"Her Story"

2006-10-14T10:27:00.000-04:00

Business Society Technology

In quotes because I stole it (the title) from the Economist.

Is there any point in writing this post...whatever.

The Economist has a review on Carly Fiorina's account of her years at the helm of Hewlett Packard and the betrayal of her ouster by the board. So why the questioning on the value of this post? I'm writing about a review of a book I haven't read. That's almost...literary incest. I actually followed Carly through her years as CEO with great interest. I'm very strong on equality although not on any form or philosophy based on affirmative action. You may have noticed from my name that I am part of a visible minority. I know and understand exclusion, injustice, unfairness. My view on these issues in a first-world country are - Tough! Get over it. Yes, I've had many problems linked to my race but I can focus on them and become a victim or on what lies within my 'sphere of influence' (thanks Stephen) and do something to overcome them. That is what interested me most about Carly and the challenges of similar women in business. They have got to where they are not just because of talent but largely because of a determination to overcome stereotypes and discrimination. I was not, however, too impressed during the years of her leadership of HP by her bravado and posturing. She too often went over the edge in compensating - but was it compensation or the headiness of power?

It comes out in this book as well (according to The Economist):

Ms Fiorina is at her best when recounting the travails of a woman in a male-dominated business culture...For another meeting, she padded her crotch with her husband's socks, the better to deliver the line “Our balls are as big as anyone's,” to hoots of approval.

Ms Fiorina is also good in her psychological descriptions of the constant betrayals that occur in corporate bureaucracies. The woman that emerges from these pages is cultured, sensitive and vulnerable, even as she acts tough. “To this day I underestimate people's capacity to abuse my trust and the insecurity that sometimes drives them.”

Her bigger theme is leadership, and this is where Ms Fiorina fails. Again and again, she interrupts a good narrative with vain and verbose harangues about corporate strategy. From one paragraph to the next, her language becomes wooden and clichéd as she descends into meaningless jargon.

I am not against her desire to be remembered as a management great - she was good. But the "vain and verbose" reminds me a lot of what I didn't like about her public side. I respect her for what she accomplished while she was CEO and the guts (not balls) she demonstrated when she so often went against popular opinion and carved out her strategy for HP.

"Her Story" should be an interesting read but I think I'll order the book from our public library rather then buying it.

Here's the link for the review. Unfortunately you need to be paid subscriber.

Amazon.com, "long tail" economy, time travel and aliens from Alpha Centauri

2006-09-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

Business Technology Humor

In an article posted on the Financial Times site, author James Boyle delivers a humorous commentary on the realities of the "long tail" economy. First, a brief explanation of the term:

"The academic in me has been very interested by the much hyped arrival of the “long tail” economy – the idea that the future lies in using the efficiency of the internet to sell smaller quantities of more goods (think of the astounding range of books on Amazon.com). One optimistic image is that thousands of small producers and entrepreneurs worldwide will be able to bypass the need for large chunks of capital and complex distribution schemes."

He then goes on to describe his experence as a book seller on Amazon.com:

I sometimes imagined the Amazon customer service folk borrowing the Tardis to deliver apologies for their incredibly rare mistakes before they even happened. But that was as a purchaser. As a vendor I entered into a shadowy different universe...

The problem with their representatives is not that their native language is not English, it is that their native planet is not Earth. Only that could explain the strange delays of weeks in replying to emails, the apparent time distortions that will suddenly lead them to re-enter a months-long dispute in the middle, and the curiously non-terrestrial logic of their replies...

Ezra W. and Mansoor, the earth names that our customer service reps use, just ceased replying at all at that point – being replaced by an automated response. That happens a lot. And as for the “search inside the book” people, it’s a tragedy. They have disappeared altogether. Perhaps a star portal went out.

If you're interested in the network economy, the long tail economy or The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything you'll enjoy this article.

Iraq war drives world instability, tensions, creates Jihadists etc.

2006-09-25T07:42:00.000-04:00

Politics Iraq War

Holy cow! The elephant in the room has been exposed, and exposed, and exposed. What particularly rankles is that it had to come from the US intelligence community. Why haven't mainline world media been more scathing of the Bush administrations bungling? While it's true that many international newspapers' commentaries on Bush jave been vituperative, journals such as The Economist have been markedly silent in their analyses. Political correctness has won over honesty to the point of stupidity.

Clearly the US war in Iraq was bound to create sympathy among extremists and generate more canon-fodder for the terrorist machines in Iraq and elsewhere. Certainly, Bush's criminal lying about his justification for the war in Iraq are condemnable and deserve the most forceful censure. Most definitely his devestation of an already-devastated country like Afghanistan deserve rebuke. I am personally thrilled to see it come out into the open.

I am in admiration of our neighbors to the south, the Americans, for exposing foolish acts committed by their own president and his administration. It gives me hope for what this world will be when my children are adults in it.

SpaceX press release on NASA contract award

2006-09-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

Business Future Technology

SpaceX, about whom I wrote here finally sent out a press release,

"SpaceX was one of two winners of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services competition. The SpaceX portion of the award is $278 million for three flight demonstrations of Falcon 9 carrying our Dragon spaceship, which are scheduled to occur in late 2008 and 2009. The final flight will culminate in the transfer of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and return of cargo safely to Earth."

I really, really hope they make it.

The entire press release can be found here. Unfortunately there's no direct link to the story (dynamic page) but check out the images of their launch and transport vehicles. Very cool.

Vengeance, The Kennedy Curse, The Dark Side of Camelot

2006-08-31T21:18:00.000-04:00

Literature Politics

Vengeance, George Jonas, ISBN 0743291646

I read Vengeance a few months before I saw Munich, the movie on the same subject by Steven Spielberg. The book is better but the movie's not bad. Vengeance has some rough edges unlike Spielberg's creation. Terrorism has rough edges. Vengeance is not a pretty thing. Jonas, in his interview of the leader of the Israeli team of Mossad agents, leads us through the same journey this man, Avner, took as he progresses(was it progress?) from a Mossad agent performing menial duties in what was essentially peacetime to the leader of a team of state-sponsored assassins. Avner tries to convince us, and mostly himself, that what he did was right and that he would do it again. But he does not entirely believe this himself. He is riddled with the guilt of murder and the guilt of having led some of his friends to their deaths. He is a hurting man. One who is a shadow of who he would have been. A man stripped of innocence and of the ability to justify what he did in the way a soldier may justify killing to defend either himself, his friends, or his country. What they did was not noble and not defensible. Do we become monsters in fighting the monsters of this world? This is an important question for us to answer in these morally grey, difficult to understand times.

The Kennedy Curse, Edward Klien, ISBN 031231292X

Although the premise of this book, that the number of Kennedys who died tragically is somehow linked to a curse is just hokey, the research done by Klein seems solid. After years of hearing a lot about John F. Kennedy I wanted to get a better insight into who he really was. In order to understand John you have to understand Honey Fitzgerald, his favourite grandfather, and John's father Joseph Kennedy and the role he played in shaping his family. It was not any curse that led to the tragedies within the Kennedy clan, just bad corrupt leadership.

The Dark Side of Camelot

This one is more specifically about John F. Kennedy but still covers much of his family. The facts are similar to the previous book but the presentation is different with more of a focus on Jack. It is less distracting then 'The Curse', allowing us to concentrate more on the facts. What he presents is not pretty either. I've only begun reading and so will have to see where it leads. I wanted a second perspective so I could check the 'facts' presented in The Curse. So far they are supported.

Pluto no longer a planet!

2006-08-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

Science Society

In a previous post I discussed the possibility that Pluto's status as planet might be rescinded due to the recent discovery of a larger celestial body.

The Economist writes:

On Thursday August 24th a general assembly of the International Astronomical Union, the body with the authority to decide such matters, voted to remove Pluto from the list of planets. Predictably some astronomers are angry and have criticised the system for making such choices. There were certainly problems with the voting. Nevertheless the decision was right.

I totally agree. It does not matter what has been historically taught. Sometimes you need to ask fundamental questions based on new information and alter long-held views.

Changing our views is what learning is all about.

More Commercial Space News

2006-08-19T08:45:00.000-04:00

Business Future Space

A while back I wrote about the disappointing news of SpaceX commercial rocket's failed maiden flight. NASA hasn't taken this too seriously having awarded $500 million to 2010 to both SpaceX and another private company for the delivery of payloads to the International Space Station.

Another feather in the cap for commercial spaceflight!

Brand "Canada"

2006-08-15T12:58:00.000-04:00

Society

The Globe and Mail has an article today about how Canada is perceived internationally. Aparantly Canada

... was named the world's second most popular national brand by a global pollster. The Anholt Nation Brands Index for the second quarter of 2006 saw Canada jump ahead of Germany and Switzerland to claim the number two spot on the list of 35 countries. Canada's rosy image now only pales beside that of the United Kingdom's (and the EU's, which was featured as a 'guest country' on the survey).

But Simon Anholt, an international branding adviser who commissions the quarterly poll through Global Market Insite, Inc., contends Canada is failing to capitalize on its positive international image — and points as proof to the gulf between those polled who say they would like to travel, invest and study in Canada to those who actually do."

Great but isn't this kind of normal. Sort of like

Gee I sure would like to go skydiving...haven't got around to it yet. Gee I sure would like to read War & Peace...haven't got around to it yet...or, Gee I sure would like to marry you...haven't got around to it yet.

If there's nothing pushing us to go somewhere or do something we rarely will...human nature. And we are halfway across the world for most of its population. By the way, I did marry her.

It's nice to know Canada is viewed so positively...but I suppose that's a pretty Canadian thing to say. Read the article.

Pluto may no longer be a planet...

2006-08-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Science Society

The Boston Globe has an article on Pluto's status as a planet.

Some 3,000 astronomers and scientists from around the world will meet in Prague this week to decide whether Pluto, discovered in 1930, measures up to the definition of a planet.

The question arises from the fact that there are a number of celestial bodies of Pluto's size in our solar system that have been found since its discovery. This is expected given the improved instruments that give us a greater ability to study the Solar System. In 2003 astronomers at the California Institute of Technology discovered Xena, a ? (not planet) a little large than Pluto in diameter.

Some have expressed concern that if we downgrade Pluto from planet to asteroid? "it would disappoint children and throw our understanding of the universe into chaos". Oh my gosh - maybe my children will suddenly develop anxiety attacks, have nightmares and start wetting their beds. Or maybe they'll wonder if they too will be downgraded from human to chimp and suffer from resulting self-esteem issues. How incredibly fearful and small-minded! Call a spade and spade, I say - if that shakes things up than so be it. Publishers are waiting with bated breath to find out if schools will be ordering reprints of science textbooks$$$ so we know someone will benefit – hey, I wonder who organized this thing, anyway? Although I have to admit to liking a shake-up of the status quo...

Cosmic Log : Bigelow's orbital 'baby'

2006-07-14T08:55:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure how seriously to take Bigelow Aerospace or their Genesis spacecraft but it is one more example of how the private sector has gained unprecedented access to space (even if it is low earth orbit). This will lead to greater innovation in low-cost spaceflight and may result in commercial enterprise making the moon, asteroids, and Mars viable investments before any government does.

Read more at cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...

» Smart displays and user productivity | Paul Murphy | ZDNet.com

2006-07-04T10:02:00.000-04:00

Smart displays do work and with companies like IBM, SAP, and Oracle driving more and more of their product development dollars into the Linux platform, the day is coming when you will find them in Fortune 1000 companies.

Open Source applications like OpenOffice.org add incentive for organizations to consider migrating some desktops from Windows to thin client. It reduces administration cost, is more secure "out of the box", and costs less from a desktop application standpoint.

There is a caveat, however. They require a certain level of expertise (UNIX) to set up and administer - the kind usually found in engineering companies, which explains why that is primarily where they are found. Every time I read about it I get the urge to call Sun and ask for a demo unit for my company's IT department.

Maybe this time I'll take the plunge...

Read more atblogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/...

NASA engineer fired for opposing Shuttle launch

2006-06-28T07:45:00.000-04:00

The New York Daily News reports

"Charlie Camarda has been bumped from his top NASA engineering post for backing colleagues who questioned the safety of Saturday's planned space shuttle launch, NASA officials said yesterday. Camarda's removal heightened the turmoil over NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's decision to take the "acceptable risk" of launching the Discovery orbiter despite warnings of potentially fatal blastoff debris."

The Challenger Disaster was a case study in my engineering ethics course in the late 80s. It was attributed to NASA's command-control political environment that ignored warnings from engineers about the o-ring's susceptibility to failure in cold weather conditions. In the Rogers Commission, Richard Feynman (a prominent physicist) pointed out "the discrepancy between management claiming a 1 in 100,000 chance of serious failure and the engineers claiming 1 in only 100".

I am sorry to hear that Camarda was removed from the mission but glad to see someone at NASA stand up for the safety of his fellow astronauts.

Formula 1 Weekend

2006-06-26T07:27:00.000-04:00

Formula 1 weekend in Montréal is not about watching a bunch of cars going round a track 71 times.

This is my second F1 and certainly not my last. Daniel, one of my sons, and I started the weekend together on Friday. Here's a shot from ourseatingg at the Senna curve, Grandstand 10.

The day started of with the Civic challenge. It may not seem like much but it's a lot of fun watching the civics take the turns and see their tires lift into the air. As well as seeing some F1 practice sessions, a number of Ferrari F430 owners brought out their cars. These cars are built specifically for racing on a special line at the Ferrari plant. The purring of the engines sends shivers down your spine. It was quite a competitive race with a few spin-outs at our curve and some accidents but no injuries.

Sunday's Formula 1 race was fantastic! Alonso started in pole with his team mate right behind, Raikkonen in third and Schumacher in Fifth.Alonsoa ran a near-perfect race with just one miss when Raikkonen almost had the opportunity to pass. Almost. From then on he dominated first place.

Raikkonen's team-mate, Montoya, lost it after he touched Rosberg, his race deteriorating and ending with his exit from the car at the Senna curve.

Schumacher quickly moved up to third place and with just 1.5 laps to go moved past Raikkonen to take second.

After the race, rather than wait 45 minutes in line for the metro from Parc Jean-Drapeau to Montréal, I took Pont de la Concorde - a 45 minute brisk walk to downtown. This picture was taken from the bridge, facing the skyline.

Being there is what it's all about. I can understand what would possess someone with the means to travel to each and every Grand Prix race around the world throughout a season. The smell of burning brakes and rubber, the deep rumble of the engines as they rev, their high-pitched scream as they fly by, down-shifting. The emotion of disappointment and victory. You just don't feel this when watching a televised broadcast. You've got to be there!

Technology News: Cutting Edge : Microsoft Developing Robotics Software

2006-06-21T08:28:00.000-04:00

Great. Now we can look forward to real crashes as our robotic vacuum cleaners experience blue screens of death and terrorize our pets and small children while in a robotic psychosis.

Or what about when my robotic lawn mower is infected by a worm from my jealous neighbour who then takes control and mows over my wifes flower bed?

We will no longer have only zombie PCs to contend with but will be facing a world of zombie robots, doing the bidding of their evil hacker masters while we sleep.

I shudder to think of the chaos and mayhem Microsoft is about to unleash on the world.

Another Internet Explorer flaw allowing evil hoards to hijack your PC!

2006-05-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

Software Open+Source

The blog entry title is tongue-in-cheek as there really is another flaw in Internet Explorer 6 that allows a remote attacker (aka bad guy) to take over your PC. What can they do once they've done this? Oh, how about installing a keylogger that logs each and every keyboard stroke you make as you, say enter you bank account number and password for your on-line banking site. Then it sends the accumulated data to the bad guy. Sounds bad? It is. What's worse is that Microsoft typically knows about these bugs for weeks before issuing a patch.

Stop using IE and start using Firefox. They also have vulnerabilities from time to time but patch critical ones with 24 hours. Compare for yourself:

Google Junky

2006-04-05T12:33:00.000-04:00

Business Technology

I am a confessed Google junky. It's true.

I have been using Google Search since I don't know when - a long time (in Internet Time). I got my Gmail account about one year ago and am now a sworn Gmailer, having rid myself of all my other personal addresses. Since then I have created this Blog (older entries migrated from Movable Type), installed Google Desktop Search on my laptop, and use Picasa 2. Of course I use Google Local / Google Maps as well.

Why! Why? you shout and ask (as is clear from all of your comments on my Blog). Google's applications work and they work well. They are also free. Can you beat that?

Of course there is nothing stopping Google from letting the POWER go to their heads and developing a form of Evil Empire Syndrome (the virus mutates and once you're infected the only cure is to divide the empire [sometimes even this doesn't work]).

Books, books, books

2006-04-01T12:55:00.000-05:00

Literature Politics

I'm reading a couple of books I'd like to briefly review.

Fortunes of War, Stephen Coonts, ISBN 0312969414

If you're looking for the answer to the meaning of life don't look here...anyway we all know it's 42.

I really enjoyed this book. His description of what it would feel like as fighter jet pilot in a dogfight with cutting-edge technology aircraft is cool. The plot hangs together fairly well and is somewhat believable although consisting of a 'perfect storm' of events including a Russo-Asiatic conventional war on the brink of conversion to nuclear war. Character development is lacking but that is clearly not the focus. This is simply a thriller to be read quickly. Take it on an airplane or business trip - it will really eat up the hours. Do not, as I did, read it in bed. I am still recovering from sleep-depravation.

Future: Tense, Gwynne Dyer, ISBN 0771029780

Gwynne Dyer is one of my favourite war historians. If you saw his public television series entitled "War" you will appreciate the effort he takes to provide historical context for today's events and in predicting tomorrow's. In this book, Dyer discusses the rise and fall of Islamic civilization in the first century and why there are deep-seated resentments today. This society is a shadow of what it once was.

"Between about A.D. 630 and 730 Arab invaders...conquered almost half the territory of the former Roman Empire. The Muslim invasions were quite unlike the Germanic invasions that had already overrun Western Europe. The people who conquered [Europe]...were mostly illiterate barbarians who brought a Dark Age in their train. The Arab conquerors ...had lots of fanatical desert horsemen in their armies but the leaders were literate townspeople from the cities of Arabia...There was no Dark Age in the lands conquered by the Muslims; instead the conquerors preserved many of the best elements of classic civilization and married them to the egalitarian spirit of Islam."

The Muslim empire endured peacefully, an exception being war with Crusader kingdoms, for a thousand years. The ruin of Muslim kingdoms began in the 1600s until:

"By 1918 all the wealth and power of the Muslim world were gone and 95% of Muslims were living as the subjects of one Christian Empire or another. It was the greatest shock and deepest humiliation that Muslims have ever experienced, and its echos still influence behaviours and attitudes in the Muslim world today."

He goes on to say that the majority of Muslims have no detailed knowledge of their history and don't wander around muttering about the injustice of it. They do however know that something has gone wrong and that the West is responsible. Clearly this is just a question of who's on top at any given moment. At one point many Christians were subjects of the Muslim world and would have felt the same way. Dyer's point is not to excuse or justify resentments, certainly not terrorism, but to illuminate. Anyone in a marriage knows the importance of knowing your spouse and what's going on in his/her mind and emotional life. When she had a fight with her boss, later that evening was short-tempered with you for no reason and you confronted her on her attitude, the rest of the evening (at best) did not go well. The fact that you were right makes little difference. We are in a global village. Understanding our neighbours will at least give us the hope of successful relationships. Dyer continues to describe the neo-conservative right that is currently in power in the 'States and what their agenda really is. Certainly not Weapons of Mass Destruction - we all knew that from day one. It is not oil and the protection of America's energy interests either. Want to know more? Read the book - I highly recommend it.

Brave New World, Aldus Huxley, 0060929871

Excellent book. Aldus Huxley's version of a future, written in the 1930's, is too close for comfort. He writes about a time, hundreds of years in the future, when man is no longer born but manufactured. Test-tube babies are genetically altered to fit into casts. Upper casts do the thinking while lower, less intelligent, less physically attractive casts become labourers. The purpose of this genetic cast system is to keep the population happy. After all, that is the best that humans can ever achieve, happiness. This world is socialist in that no one wants of anything although higher casts have special privileges. Sex is all about happiness. Partnering with one person for even a few months is discouraged as this can form bonds that inevitably bring about pain and sorrow. As many partners as possible limits this risk. John, a 'savage', is discovered and brought into the New World. His elation at being part of this futuristic (to him) society turns to horror as he discovers what it really consists of. This is where the book gets interesting, about a third of the way through, and we see the impact John has on three individuals who come to know him.

Velocity, Dean Koontz, ISBN 0-7393-1556-0

Creepy describes a lot of Koontz' books. I am listening to this audio book of 9 1/2 hours on CD as I drive to and from work every day. I listened to another of his books, Taken, a few months back and liked it so much that I borrowed this one from our library. If you are squeemish don't read this. If you get easily frightened, don't read Taken. Koontz spends a lot of time on details. Here's a typical paragraph:

"Are you prepared for your first wound?" As though an Einsteinian switch had thrown time into slow-mo, the note slipped out of his fingers and seemed to float like a feather into his lap. The light went out. In a trance of terror, reaching with his right hand for the revolver on the passenger seat, Billy turned slowly to the right as well, intending to look over his shoulder and into the dark back seat [...] and the window in the driver's door imploded. As safety glass collapsed in a prickly mass across his chest and thighs, the revolver slipped out of his grasping fingers and tumbled onto the floor.

What a thrill! How disappointing!

2006-03-24T19:26:00.000-05:00

Business Future Technology

This afternoon at 2:30 PM Pacific Time the Falcon 1 rocket successfully lifted off from it's launch pad at SpaceX's Kwajalein launch site on Omelek Island. This is the first commercial / private venture to get payloads into LEO (low earth orbit) this year and higher over the coming years. I opened my browser at 5:00 PM to monitor the webcast and tried to concentrate on work while I listened to the microphone chatter from 'mission control' in the background. I didn't want to miss the 5:30 PM launch. I was nervous. As they counted down the last few seconds my heart-beat increased making me wonder what this lucky bunch of entrepreneurs must be feeling. Lift-off was right on time! The webcast cut from a ground-based camera to one mounted inside the vehicle looking down through a glass portal. When the webcast failed seconds into the launch it seemed as if all was going well. I later learned that the launch vehicle and payload were lost. What a disappointment. Rocket science is not easy. My excitement stemmed, not form the launch itself but from the fact that a private individual, the founder of PayPal, who started a company to put civilians in the space business was launching his first rocket. Of course it takes a team to make this happen but nothing would have happened without his vision and a cool $100 million of his fortune. In the end I remain elated. Way-to-go Elon!

A Tribute to Einstein

2006-03-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

Life Society

I'd like to comment on some of Einstein's quotes over the following weeks. Why? He was a thoughtful man.

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -— this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth."

If you subscribe to pleasure as an end in and of itself, although somewhat opposed to Einstein's thinking you remain in famous company. You feel much as the Marquis de Sade.

The Cell Processor and Octopiler

2006-03-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

Technology Future

I am going to talk about an area in which I consider myself pretty much an idiot - computer programming (my wife says I shouldn't call myself an idiot and she's really smart so maybe there's something to it). I have written C (anyone remember Borland Turbo C?), 68000 assembler, and Clipper programs but that's the extent of it (and clearly also a long time ago) so don't exepect great depth and insight.

I'll tell you why the Cell is significant after I first tell you what it is. The Cell processor is made up of one 64-bit Power Architecture core and 8 additional CPU cores called Synergistic Processor Units or SPUs. The SPUs are built to handle computationally intensive applications like video or signal processing, and cryptography among others. Here's what the chip looks like:

IBM designed it in partnership with Sony and Toshiba. The Cell's first application will be to power the heart of Sony's new gaming console, the PS3, which is due out sometime later this year (consensus says autumn for the US and a little earlier for Japan). This is a totally unique design. Among the major CPU manufacturers, including SUN, makers of the SPARC-series processors, Intel makers of the Pentium-series CPUs, and AMD, most recently makers of the Opteron processor, IBM was the first to deliver a dual-core chip in the Power series. Now they have delivered the first 9-core processor with the Cell. It is initially positioned to drive multi-media products like HDTVs, the upcoming consumer media hubs which will stream everything, and of course the PS3. It is totally unique - did I mention that? The chip clocks in at 4GHz - whoops, that's faster than Intel has been able to deliver - and 256 Gigaflops, a ten-times speed improvement over today's PC.

So what exactly does all this horsepower translate into? In an interview with lead PS3 game developer Lyndon Homewood of Volatile Games who is already working with the PS3 developer's kit, he describes their experiences and how the Cell will practically deliver on its promises:

"The graphics capabilities of PS3 will, I think, be slightly above the absolutely top-end graphics cards on the PC, but you've got much more processing power in the box so you're going to see a lot more physics, a lot more generated geometry. With water ripples, for example - they're pretty much algorithms, you have a flat plane of triangles and you run some sort of mathematical algorithm over it to generate a surface rippling effect - well, you will have the processing power to do these sorts of generated geometry effects On PS3. You could actually put one chip aside just to do that..."

As an article in ArsTechnica explains, the Octopiler is a compiler that is slated to "take in a sequential program that's written to a unified memory model, and output binaries that make efficient use of the massive, heterogeneous system-on-a-chip that is the Cell Broadband Engine". Sounds complicated. It is. It is difficult to write programs that take advantage of multi-processor computers. It is still more difficult to write a program that uses such a processor efficiently without leaving chunks of it either idle or underutilized. There are only two ways to produce such code. The first is to get your hands on a really talented programmer but these are in extremely limited supply and so is not very practical. The second is to write a compiler that will optimize the code for you. The better the compiler, in theory, the less talented the developer required to code for the CPU. In practice this is something that remains to be seen. In the months following the PS3's launch we can expect to see a raft of articles examining how developers have used the Cell and if it is living up to its promise. I am certain the first Cell applications will fall short, which definitely includes games and potentially includes the PS3 itself. I do think, however, that with time the Cell will deliver. There is so little innovation in personal computer components today. IBM, Sony, and Toshiba took a huge risk in delivering such a novel design for a CPU. I admire them for it and hope sincerely they are as successful as they deserve to be.

More High-Tech Investments Move Overseas

2006-03-01T07:11:00.000-05:00

Technology Economy

The US continues to farm out jobs overseas as Intel announces plans to invest $300MM in Vietnam:

Intel Corp., the world's largest chip maker, said it would invest $300 million to build a factory in Vietnam to package and test microchips that power personal computers and mobile phones.

It marks the biggest investment in Vietnam by a U.S. company, and Intel has an option to double its investment in the country.

Jobs are moving overseas but mostly those at the bottom of the food chain. Research is still primarily done in US companies and universities. Offshore research has the same challenges as offshore coding - communication and cultural challenges result in only non-core work being pushed out of North America. Better get on top of the food chain if you aren't already. The shift of jobs is not likely to stop anytime soon.

Global Economic Imbalances

2006-02-06T12:40:00.000-05:00

Politics Economy

In today's Globe and Mail, an article entitled "Dodge warns of global imbalances" discusses comments by Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge where he states:

...global imbalances, such as the record U.S. current account deficit and the ballooning surpluses in some Asian countries, are persisting and if not corrected could result in "periods of outright recession."

...An increase in domestic savings in the U.S. could slow the global economy "sharply" unless there's corresponding growth in demand outside the U.S., he told Caribbean central bankers in Bridgetown, Barbados.

"Such a slowdown in growth, in turn, raises the risk that policy-makers might resort to protectionism," he said. "In that event, a period of very slow growth could, perhaps, be punctuated by periods of outright recession."

...a sudden disruption in the economy will be especially hard on those countries with very open economies, Mr. Dodge said — including Canada.

I wonder what Stephen Harper's government will bring to Canada vis-à-vis North American protectionism versus openness? What Canada needs, as I've stated in previous posts here and here, is stronger relationships with the EU and emerging economies like China and India while maintaining a strong relationship with the US. This may not be in the best interests of the States, especially given President Bush's comments on the need to minimize dependency on foreign energy sources (I bet he's not thinking of Canada as foreign). Given the extent of our cross-border trade and America's interest in keeping its negotiating power through the preservation of 'trade-share', it will require true statesmanship to win acceptance from our neighbor.

Space Travel Goes Mainstream

2006-02-03T17:30:00.000-05:00

Technology Future

Last year, The Ansari X-Prize $10,000,000 purse was awarded to the SpaceShipOne team for being the first commercial enterprise to put a man in space and bring him back to earth safely, twice in quick succession.

Since then, a new enterprise has been born, the Rocket Racing League. From Wired.com's article:

Launched last October by Whitelaw and Peter Diamandis, whose Ansari X Prize awarded $10 million for the first privately built manned spaceship in 2004, the Rocket Racing League, or RRL, has already flown a prototype rocket plane and is now building the first of 10 planned X-Racers. Three-time space shuttle astronaut and former Air Force test pilot Rick Searfoss, who serves as RRL's chief test pilot, called the rocket racers "a real kick in the pants" after a test flight in October. Searfoss compared their performance characteristics to those of fighter planes because of their high thrust-to-weight ratio.

The promise of that kind of flying excitement is what attracted Don "Dagger" Grantham and Robert "Bobaloo" Rickard to sign on as members of the RRL's first team, called Leading Edge Rocket Racing. Both men are F-16 fighter pilots as well as entrepreneurs, and they see rocket racing as the next great flying experience.

"We started talking about 10 or 15 or 20 years from now," said Rickard, "when there are no more airplanes for fighter pilots to fly and everything's done remotely with unmanned vehicles. What's going to happen to guys like us that want to fly fighters and pull 9 Gs and do all the things that we get to do now?" To Rickard and Grantham, the answer was obvious: They'll fly rocket racers.

The world is truly becoming a different, intriguing, and exciting place. Imagine where our kids might get to go...

"Kodak Digital Sales Outpace Film for First Time"

2006-01-31T07:45:00.000-05:00

Technology

The Globe and Mail is reporting today that Kodak's digital sales were greater than film product sales for the first time in 2005.

Digital sales accounted for 54 per cent of total revenue for the year, marking the first time in the company's 125-year history that digital exceeded traditional sales.

For those of us old enough to remember, Kodak's name has been synonymous with film and photography throughout our lives. Today, many of us will not attach the Eastman Kodak brand with imaging at all which speaks to how rapidly digital photography has taken over from film-based, even though it's only been available to the consumer since about 1994!

Old Style Managers On The Way Out?

2006-01-29T18:06:00.000-05:00

Business

These two comics are in February's issue of The Harvard Business Review and demonstrate the thinking of some that old style managers are on the way out.

Are they? There is more talk these days of extending mandatory retirement ages than of ousting experienced managers. Time will tell but...well, the first guy's just a bit of an exageration isn't he...although come to think of it, I used to know a guy just like him...:-)

North America's Impending Loss of Economic Control

2006-01-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

Economy Business

The writing is on the wall.

While Americans and Canadians worry about offshoring and the resulting loss of jobs, there is another and far greater threat: the loss of control over the economy. In an earlier post I discussed China's rising prominence in the computer and electronics manufacturing sectors. American companies are also losing marketshare on other fronts. Ford has just announced a plan to cut 30,000 jobs by 2012 in order to reduce its financial hemorrhaging. In an article entitled "Ford's latest Rebuild" (subscription required), the Economist reports:

"Bill Ford, chairman and a scion of the founder’s family, is particularly concerned that Ford is losing out in its biggest and most important market, America. This week he revealed a plan imaginatively dubbed the “Way Forward” that is supposed to cut losses and win back favour from American drivers. He pledged “sacrifice at all levels” to ensure “sustainable, profitable change”. The firm will pare capacity and could lose as many as 30,000 jobs by 2012, around a quarter of its total North American workforce. Some 14 factories will be closed as Ford's car division attempts to return to profitability by 2008.

The firm’s failings are as apparent as rust on a 1970s Ford Maverick. In 2005 Ford’s vital North American carmaking operations produced a pre-tax loss of $1.6 billion; worldwide it lost $1 billion."

The problems are partly related to legacy costs the big three are saddeled with including the costs of unionized workers and rich employee benefits. Again from the same article:

"Japanese carmakers are nimbler not because they produce cars abroad: much of their output is from American factories. But the Japanese firms are not encumbered by the legacy costs of their American rivals. Nor are unions so dominant in the Japanese-run factories."

While the lower operating costs of Japanese fimrs should be a concern as it directly affects US automakers' ability to compete with them profitably, it is the loss of market share that is most worrying:

"Although overall car sales are down a little in America since a peak in 2000 the market is still buoyant. Nearly 17m cars were sold in 2005 and customers are expected to drive a similar number off the country’s forecourts this year. But America’s car giants are losing out to Japanese firms. Toyota is threatening to overtake GM as the world’s biggest car producer this year. Nissan and Honda have made impressive inroads in America. In 2005 the three Japanese firms, combined, grabbed over 28% of America’s market share. Mr Fields acknowledges that the industry’s “big three” is becoming the “big six”."

What we North Americans are in danger of, more than job losses, is the loss of control over our economy. My questions are: what happens once most of the products we purchase are feeding the coffers of foreign controlled companies? What are the root causes of this problem? What are we gong to do about it?

First They Killed My Father

2006-01-23T22:02:00.000-05:00

Literature Politics

This is an excellent book about a five year-old girl's recollections of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Loung Ung, the author and woman who was the girl, describes her family's flight from Phnom Penh to the countryside where they hid their identities for years. Were the Kmehr Rouge to discover of her father's position in the military as a police captain for the incumbent government it would have resulted in his and his family's death or imprisonment. As they move from village to village and their family is divided they cling more and more tightly to each other. Her world constricts to the immediacy of mother, father, brothers, and sisters. You feel her pain and anguish as she works through her memories of the hardships and horrors of her early childhood years. The narration is factual and almost unemotional at times as she describes the brutality she and her loved ones endured. Her memories are, I believe, coloured by the vision of a five year-old who does not have the range of emotions to accurately describe what she is feeling. And yet, even through the tough child she became in order to survive an intolerable situation, we see her innocence and the injustice of what no young child should ever experience. All of us need to read of these events, understand how and why they came about, and make sure they do not repeat in our lifetimes - either in our country or in another. It is still hard for me to believe it all happened between the years when I was 7 and 11 years old. I had no idea what was going on half way around the world at the time. I wish I had known.

When Will Microsoft Release Office for Linux?

2006-01-16T21:17:00.000-05:00

Open Source Technology

When will Microsoft release Office for Linux?

We are seeing some sporadic reaction from governments around the world to Microsoft's practical monopoly on both personal computer desktop operating systems (Microsoft Windows) and desktop productivity software (Microsoft Office). The government of Peru put forward a bill in 2002 that was passed into law in late 2005 encouraging government institutions to use Open Source Software:

"...Basically, we can say that the fundamental principles that drive the present Bill are tightly related to the basic guarantees of a democratic State and we can sum them up in the following:
Free Access of the citizens to public information
Perenniality of public data
Security of the State and of the citizens

To guarantee the citizens' free access to information, it is indispensable that the coding of the data not be tied to a sole provider. The use of standard and open formats guarantees this free access, making possible the creation of compatible software."

The city of Munich decided in 2003 to change 14,000 PCs running the Windows operating system to the Linux operating system and from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, an equivalent but free software. South Korea, China, and Taiwan are further examples. Most recently The Commonwealth of Massachusetts decided to make the Opendocument file format, supported by OpenOffice.org, the exclusive format for all electronic documents generated by the Executive Department.

Why has this move from Microsoft's proprietary systems to open systems started only in the last few years? There are a few reasons:

Competing and relatively mature equivalent software and operating systems are only now available and they are either free or obtainable at low cost.
The importance of being able to recover electronic documents has become more and more apparent over time. Remember the IBM PC was introduced in 1981, only 25 years ago. Since laws like Sarbanes-Oxley have been passed the importance of recovering documents that are 10 or more years old has increased. Since the way Microsoft stores files, in MS Word for example, has remained a proprietary secret there has been no reliable way to fully recover older documents when new versions no longer support the format the originals were saved in.
Microsoft's Office has become more expensive over its life and has since remained that way. In the early days the price charged for the product could be argued due to having to develop a brand new application but after so many versions of the product it is hard for users to accept being gouged. Just take a look at how much cash MS has on hand and it will become obvious.

Although enough organizations have decided to make the move to free software to worry Microsoft none has as yet completed the move. How successfully and cost-effectively it can be done therefore remains an unanswered question. I am sure Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer are not losing sleep over lost revenues. The same article that discusses Peru's move to encourage competing software in government also calls Peru a "hotbed of piracy". Microsoft has been losing money in this and in other developing economies to software theft for years. It is the current exposure (bad press) and the future lost revenues that worry them. Linux and OpenOffice.org still need a little work before they are adopted by mainstream users but are getting closer with each new version released. If Microsoft were to release Office for Linux today they would hasten a move to their arch-rival operating system, something they certainly have no interest in doing. I expect that once Linux adoption hits an as-yet undefined 'tipping point' (I predict within 5 years) they will sell versions of Office that either run on Linux or within a Web browser or other thin client that will run within the Linux OS. IBM has released a new collaboration software called IBM Workplace that allows you to, among other things, create MS Word compatible documents through a browser (yes, it works with Firefox) without having Word on your computer. It uses OpenOffice.org to do this. I also suspect that the effective price of Office will drop significantly over the following years to allow Microsoft to keep its hold on businesses and consumers by maintaining their share of the market. By then they will have other applications using Office and its services and for which we will again be paying. Gates' and Ballmer's hands are in many pies these days, not only in order to grow their revenues, but also to protect them against future erosion. The days when MS could make, as in mint, money selling Office suites and Operating Systems are nearing an end. This article written by an ex-Microsoftie discusses Microsoft's reliance on Windows and Office revenues.

Even so, I expect Redmond has one or two cards up its sleeves and will have little trouble continuing to be profitable for decades to come. I wish them well and am glad to see the gradual shift in their business practices to a more collaborative approach. That's what real competition does to a monopoly that wants to survive. So my hats off to all the people and companies that have helped make Linux a reality. To SUN for open sourcing OpenOffice.org after purchasing it from its creator, to all the other companies and communities that have made open source software a reality (the Mozilla Foundation, the makers of GIMP, Novell, the Apache Foundation and many, many more), and to Microsoft who are proving that you can learn how to play nice well after Kindergarten.

The Dumbing Down of America

2006-01-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

Economy Society

While the citizens of rising economies like India and China are getting more and more educated, North America is dumbing down.

According to an article in the Economist, high tuition levels prevent 40% of qualified high-school graduates from attending 4-year programs and 22% from attending college at all. This while India has doubled its university student population since the early 90s and China's PhD recipients have jumped from 14,500 in 1998 to 48,700 in 2003 (see article)!

Technology companies like Intel, Microsoft, AMD, and Cisco are investing billions in the Indian economy. Not only is labour cheaper than in America but it is also a highly educated labour force. Instead of whining about the loss of jobs, North Americans need to take education seriously. It starts with the government and translates into, among other things, more investment in universities and student support programs with lower tuition fees and favourable lending policies. Traditionally, many immigrants in North America have been underemployed. This is changing. As their home countries become more competitive and economies take off, many of these people will be returning home or not immigrating to North America in the first place.

The education of the masses is a good thing. It indirectly reduces poverty and the spread of diseases like AIDS. The first world should want rising economies around the world to flourish. From an economic perspective, these economies will be purchasing many of the goods manufactured by first world corporations. Our concern, as the world gets more educated, should be centered on what place our children will occupy in the resulting food chain.

Firefox in the mainstream press

2005-12-16T12:11:00.000-05:00

Software Open+Source

For those of you skeptics who can't understand why I am pushing Firefox, I am including this article from The Economist, a very well-respected and generally very accurate weekly European news magazine. It talks about the importance of another browser like Firefox to compete with the browser-monopoly-that-was Internet Explorer. It also gives you a little background information on the non-profit organization that builds Firefox.

Take back the Web!

RIM and NTP saga

2005-12-14T18:22:00.000-05:00

Technology

I have to quote this one little snippet from an Economist article which outlines why NTP's patent claims against RIM are stupid as I so boldly state without any backup in a previous entry (I was lazy and didn't want to compile the proof since I know my claim is true).

"RIM is generally regarded as the victim of an injustice. Founded 21 years ago by two engineering students who still help run it, the company is being held for ransom by a “patent troll”. The monster emerging from under the bridge is an entity called NTP, which doesn't actually make or sell anything—it doesn't even have a website, for goodness sake. But it has hired a handful of lawyers to enforce its patents and in settlement talks this week, it was demanding almost 6% of RIM's sales in America until 2012 when its patents expire—about $1 billion. NTP's threat of a legal injunction to shut down BlackBerry unless it pays up is viewed as little short of extortion."

Nice when I can just point to someone else's hard work. Sigh, if only the rest of my life was like that...

China's high-tech exports surpass US for the first time

2005-12-14T18:11:00.000-05:00

Technology Politics Economy

In a previous blog entry entitled, "The Shifting Sands" I commented that America needed to learn how to play nice in the sandbox that is the world economy or no one would play with her. Further evidence of America's reduced dominance has surfaced as reported by the Economist in their weekly business brief of Dec 14;

The OECD reported that China had surpassed the United States for the first time in exporting information-technology goods, such as computers, mobile phones and related parts. China exported $180 billion-worth of IT goods in 2004, and is expected to keep its top position when figures are collated for 2005."

Partnerships become more and more relevant for a Super Economy such as she as economic power shifts. I have nothing against the US and in fact would welcome a more cosmopolitan attitude from our oh-so-near neighbour.

Why I'm prolific today

2005-12-10T11:25:00.000-05:00

It's past 11 AM and I'm still in bed, reading and using my laptop because Daniel's Hockey (yes hockey is capitalized in our family) doesn't start until 3:30 PM today. Laura's in Hawksbury with David for a practice. She was up at 7:15 when the alarm went off, no actually it was 7:30, no 7:45, no 8 AM. I am still in bed. I am writing. I feel no guilt whatsoever (as my partner in crime can attest). Many weekends include my getting up for Hockey at 5:30 AM on Saturday and Sunday. Two weekends ago I spent 8 hours in the car, in arenas, and in changerooms. Let's get something else straight. I never played Hockey. I don't watch it on TV but I do think it's really good for my two older boys and support them in it. My only fear is that Michael our youngest may want to play soon...

I am in bed and feel no guilt. I am also listening to Rock Lobster, Dream Police, and Juke Box Hero is coming up next.

NTP's patent claims against RIM are stupid

2005-12-10T11:05:00.000-05:00

Technology

This is plug for RIM and for one of my friends who works there. Maybe he'd like to post a comment?

Laura and I were talking about it the other night. That a company that doesn't even use the patent it's suing for can hold another company that has millions of users of systems based on this patent (untrue, but anyway) is criminal. That a court will help a company accomplish this is criminally negligent.

So much for my insightful analysis.

High tech content of posts is boring

2005-12-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

I know, I know I am publishing more about technology than other more interesting subjects lately. Don't give up on me yet. Actually I had published many more non-tech posts on our home computer. It was running [Warning: the following paragraph may not be appropriate for the tech-challenged or phobic] Movable Type with Apache, PHP and MySQL and worked beautifully. Bell Canada's high-speed internet wireless router really sucked though. I should have been able to reliably set up a Dynamic DNS address to the PC. In actual fact the router kept losing the forwarding port to the site on our PC. I gave up and moved to Blogger. Then our PC (did I tell you we were running Windows XP on it?) decided it didn't want us to log in to it anymore... So I lost most of the content I'd written (not having backed it up - oops) [inappropriate content ends]. Hmm, let's see...first monopolistic Bell gives me problems, then Windows XP of the nefarious Microsoft Empire...

I'm planning articles on a book called "First they killed my Father" written by a survivor of the Cambodian atrocities. She was five at the time and lost half her family of eight. It's not a fun subject but her story really moved me and I'd like to write about it.

I am also in the middle of an article on knowledge work and knowledge workers based on a book I'm currently reading. Then I'd also like to write about, "Shake Hands With the Devil". This is particularly meaningful for me as it is written by Roméo Dallaire, a French Canadian from Montréal. He was the general responsible for the failed UN mission to Rwanda. Emotions evoked range across rage, pain and sorrow. The quality of writing is not great but the content and telling of the story is outstanding. A must read for all who care about the weak of the world and feel we are responsible for protecting them.

I've also recently read some fiction I'd like to review.

Shut down Internet Explorer and run to... Firefox!

2005-12-10T10:29:00.000-05:00

Software Open+Source

I know I may sound like a Microsoft Bigot but actually I'm not. I do use Windows XP on my work laptop and home computer (because I have to). I am also the manager of an IT department which heavily relies on MS technologies so I can't really be called a bigot.

In this post, e-week point out:

"The zero-day exploit, posted by a U.K.-based group called "Computer Terrorism," could allow a remote hacker to take complete control of a Windows system if the victim simply browses to a malicious Web site."

It's a real security hole in Internet Explorer 6 that allows the execution of code on your computer by someone you don't know. In other words a cracker could load a program onto your computer to say, copy all of your word and excel files to their website. Do you feel good about that?

Neither do I.

Nor do I feel good about Microsoft knowing about this hole since May of this year and yet still not having fixed it . Software defects are a part of life - I accept that. But to willingly ignore a known problem for months is inexcusable. Firefox has had security problems in the past just like IE but they will issue a patch within days if not hours of learning about it. Version 1.5 is even better as it automatically checks for updates and installs them if there are any.

Switch to Firefox.

Firefox 1.5 released!

2005-12-09T08:19:00.000-05:00

Software Open+Source

I've been using Firefox since...before it existed and was called Mozilla! Although I am late in posting this, Firefox 1.5 was released November 29th.

For those of you who don't know what Firefox is (a web browser, a replacement for Internet Explorer, your best friend[sad but true, admit it!]) you can read this post which discusses reasons for switching from IE. Did you know that the % of users that use IE has dropped from 85.8% in January of 2002 to 73.5% in November 2005. The percentage of Mozilla/Firefox users has grown from 0% in January 2002 to 22.2% November 2005 (see here for data). This may not seem like a lot but considering that IE comes pre-installed on 90% of computers used to browse the Web (same as previous reference but further down) it is remarkable. Firefox is also built by a non-profit organization with virtually no advertising dollars. The reason, therefore, for its growth is the positive press it has received in the industry and through word of mouth.

There are other reasons to use Firefox, and thereby support, the Mozilla foundation who created Firefox. Monopolies stifle innovation, give inordinate power to one organization and allow them to inflate prices beyond what is reasonable. The rise of Firefox has pushed Microsoft to, for arguably the first time since IE 6 was released in 2000 [I think], improve on IE's functionality in it's next release scheduled for 2006. Mozilla, has put out two browsers and new incremental versions, each of which had new and useful functionality in them, since 2002.

Competition is a good thing. Encourage it by adding yourself to the statistics of those who use Firefox and watch the numbers rise.

$100 Laptop Project Advancing

2005-11-15T07:09:00.000-05:00

Society Technology Open Source

I am not a big fan of technology. This may sound strange coming from someone who makes a living off the stuff but it's not. Take the laptop for example. The number of features and the power it currently offers, not to mention the price, is over the top for most people. Each version of OS requires more and more power and they deliver nothing new. With all that power what ever happened to the promise of effective speech recognition? Why are we still using keyboards to enter data? They come from the typewriter and still have the same layout for goodness sakes! Did you know that the layout was chosen to slow down the typist because the mechanical typewriters of the time couldn't keep up with fast typists? Stupid!

I fully support the One Laptop Per Child project because it's all about getting the right technology to the right people. You can read an article from the Wall Street Journal here. A basic laptop with the ability to compose documents, write programs, surf the Web, e-mail and IM; being delivered to third-world students. This is cool! There is all kinds of educational material available for free over the Web. For example, MIT has an initiative called OpenCourseWare to publish the classroom material of 1800 courses across multiple disciplines by 2007. Again - Cool! I know there are many hurdles like how to get the computers, training on how to use them, and Internet access to the students. There are many more but all of these 'issues' mean nothing without the possibility of affordable computing. Even without Internet access these laptops can communicate with each other via wireless networking. The students can still use them to program and compose. They even work with a hand-crank to power them when a power source is not available.

Cool.

Canada, Japan move towards free trade

2005-11-14T09:01:00.000-05:00

Politics Economy

It's high time we start strengthening our trade relationships with others than just our neighbors in close physical proximity (in reference to an article posted today in the Globe and Mail). We are not as bound by distances as we once were. We trade more in information today than ever before and Canada, being a country rich in knowledge workers, has a lot to offer to the rest of the world. Of course we will continue to trade in goods like lumber, oil and gas but our economy is run more and more on knowledge.

I have nothing at all against trading with the US but subscribe to the wisdom of not placing all of one's eggs in one basket.

The devil will be in the details, however. The benefit Canadians will reap from a free trade agreement with Japan will be determined by the deal that is brokered. Regardless of the short-term outcome, as it may need adjusting to achieve maximum return for us, to start negotiations is a step in the right direction.

IBM's Power processor versus Intel

2005-10-31T07:49:00.000-05:00

Technology Future Open+Source

In 2004, IBM booked less revenue in total hardware (which includes processors, servers, storage, and PCs) than Intel booked in processors alone (IBM 2004 annual report). What makes IBM think they can make the Power processor a successful competitor to Intel’s Pentium series of processors?

It’s true that IBM is looking to achieve a much broader adoption of Power technology than Intel has achieved. This ranges from embedded processors in storage devices, a Power processor driving every game console as of 2006, Power in small to large servers and even ‘powering’ the world’s fastest supercomputer. In a different light IBM has also taken a completely different approach from Intel. They have made the Power architecture an open specification - one that is, however, guided by a consortium of manufacturers including Freescale, Sony, and Cadence among others. This does not guarantee success.

SUN was one of the first large manufacturers to attempt an open-source style specification through the Java Community Process (JCP). It led to what many consider to be the feature-bloat of the language and some performance issues that Microsoft is not facing given their proprietary process. Microsoft, through greater control over the technology underlying dot-Net (including the OS) has arguably been able to squeeze better performance out of their design. Granted, IBM’s power.org model is slightly different from SUN's JCP but is it different enough?

The jury is out on whether open source models for large systems will work in the long run. In the end, as Linux is showing us, large vendors want more say in how an open source asset is evolved over time. Who do you think is contributing the most code and is exerting the greatest influence over how Linux evolves? Is it the lone hobbyist / researcher or the team of developers working for some of the large corporations with a stake in Linux (Red Hat, IBM, HP, and Novell to name a few)? It’s not just about corporate clout but about the practicality of ensuring Linux’ advancement and maturation. That takes great developers and Linux has to somehow do it without paying any of them. When RedHat offers engineering help will Andrew Morton, the current Linux kernel maintainer, say no? This may reduce some of the positive effect the OSS model experiences in innovation. Competing interests vying for control over a common resource invariably weaken its power. The JCP has not led the Java language to innovate as rapidly as it should have, using Microsoft as a benchmark and the rapidity with which they have successfully developed and deployed dot-Net.

In a market such as the design of mainstream processors that run small to large servers, cash is king. Whoever invests the most in R&D, wins.

The use of Java to build business systems

2005-06-02T11:16:00.000-04:00

Technology Software

I have been a big fan of Java for several years. It all started 4 years after I standardized my applications development organization on Visual Studio and C++.

Let's start with why we standardized on C++ for UNIX and Windows. The year was 1999 and we were building an e-commerce site. We needed a platform to develop on. In 1997, the year we developed the core or CRM-portion of this e-commerce platform we had decided that Sun/Solaris would be our server OS since NT4 was about as stable as nitroglycerine. So Java made a lot of sense due to its cross-platform design as it would in time allow us to migrate our CRM application using middle-tier Java code. As we began our investigations into available technologies the first difficulty we encountered was a lack of 'advanced' IDEs. This was OK since I was hiring, get this, real programmers who could work without one, however it would affect our productivity and ever a dollars and cents man this did concern me. The second hurdle which is what really led to our choice of abandoning Java, was the rate at which the Java API was changing and the lack of backwards compatibility between versions. This was just not acceptable in a mission critical and yet cost sensitive environment. I couldn't afford to have to re-write my applications 2 years down the road. The last hurdle was the lack of availability of affordable (less than $ 1/2 million) Java-based e-commerce platforms - you know the shopping cart etc. piece of it. This was important as we had limited time and so chose a component-based build strategy.

I also needed to adopt a mainstream language, something I believed Java would become, and could not therefore adopt the use of more what I consider esoteric languages. Therefore an MS-based solution became our choice by default with both mid-tier and web server components running on Windows. Over the years we encountered the need to, and ensuing difficulties of, interfacing with a variety of systems including our IVR and CTI systems. Our clients also wanted hooks into our systems. We were building more and more server-side components and, in order to leverage the benefits of code and platform reuse wanted to migrate the CRM portion from a fat to a thin client. So I once again, in 2002, revisited the platform question. Java or Windows-based?

Over the past two years I have read more articles than I care to remember on the Java / .Net performance debate. Although this is a relevant issue I think it more useful to compare Java and other languages like C++ since they, like Java and unlike .Net, have been around for long enough for organizations to develop real-world versus laboratory experience with them, putting us in a better position to compare. I suggest you read The Java Performance Debate at (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10729) since the author has gone to some lengths to provide many of the links that I am just too lazy to go back and find.

What it boils down to is that I buy into Java as a development platform because:

It is a cross-platform environment and means that I am not held hostage by any one vendor
It runs on different types of devices efficiently (cell phone, PDA, Blackberry, server, PC)
Multiple organizations contribute to its specification
It is more productive than C++
For BIG systems, vendor support includes many server management features not found in languages such as PHP or even .Net
There are numerous Open Source projects built on it
Large companies committed to Open Source contribute significant code to the free-as-in-freedom code base

There are drawbacks even with the above benefits such as the JCP (Java Community Process) getting bogged down in red tape and resulting in feature bloat and excessive complexity.

I'll continue this post at a later time. I have to assess my current organization's programming practices and standards and make a decision on direction. Lots of thinking to do.

The Shifting Sands

2005-05-02T16:05:00.000-04:00

Politics Economy

The US doesn't get it.

What they helped to innovate, to invent, to conceive – the business use of technology, has brought down the pan-global barriers of distance. That is why India has become an outsourcing and IT powerhouse. Available network and information bandwidth, using technologies such as MPLS with the ability to deliver QoS, tying in all developed world economies translates directly into their ability to deliver software to mainframes in the US, Canada, Europe instantly. The same is true for call centres and telecommunications networks. English has become the language of business around the world due almost exclusively to the US. Now, countries that have had to develop their English-language ability can do business directly with US corporations.

Future economic power will come through collaboration. The super power concept is fast becoming an obsolete one. Economies that obtain their power through the monopolies and through the spending power of their own citizens will be dwarfed by the new economic super-states. Not states in a political but an economic sense. As developing economies with billions of citizens become developed economies, they will have the buying power to influence the rest of the world. They also have the passion and drive of growing economies. These qualities come from the socio-economic pressures created by newly injected wealth after decades of subsistence-level living. They will not stop. Europe is also coming into her own. The formation of the EU is the beginning of a new economic power that may outstrip the US.

The US continues her foreign policy of unilateral action and self-interestedness. This is not popular and does not win her the future allies she needs (For an example read, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”). As dependence on trade with the US weakens, as it already has, world economic powers will be less concerned with her policies and directives and will be less willing to deliver concessions. This includes security concerns but I think, especially, economic ones. Look at how America reacted to France's criticism of her involvement in Iraq - with hostility (albeit verbal). The US will not benefit from the trade deals between members of the EU and will suffer an increasing trade deficit, as it is already experiencing with China.

All of this will result in reduced US competitiveness world-wide and the reduced viability of the US socio-economic model. Individual Americans will be less wealthy. It is not hard to imagine the collapse of a heavily indebted society. US citizens carry a fairly large amount of debt. Once their ability to finance it is removed, due to lost jobs and lowered salaries, the society will tend towards bankruptcy and collapse.

Not just Americans but their country as well is heavily indebted. The country's current hundred-billion-dollar deficits show this. Who is financing her? How long will 'they' continue to finance her via foreign investments? In an article from TIME entitled, "Hey, Big Spender ..." of Jan. 2, 2006 they write:

"The $236 billion Clinton surplus of 2000 has become a $400 billion annual deficit. Setting aside Social Security, about a quarter of what the government has spent since Bush became President has been borrowed. And estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that if his tax cuts are made permanent--as he is advocating--deficits will persist for at least 10 years."

Canada needs to develop stronger political and economic ties with European and Eastern nations like Japan, China, and India if our's is to remain a viable economy in the coming 30-50 years.

Business Considers Open Source on Par with Commercial Software

2005-02-15T14:02:00.000-05:00

Open Source Software

You can see this post and the discussion it generated here on slashdot. At the International Conference on COTS-based Software Systems in Spain it was fascinating to hear large organizations talking about Open Source Software as being on-par with commercial software in some instances. Certainly Linux is the perfect example.

Collapse

2005-02-12T07:40:00.000-05:00

Literature Society Technology

As I read Collapse by Jared Diamond I am struck by the departure from long-standing values in a very short period of time. Technology brings about fundamental shifts in our culture. It impacts our communication (frequency, quality), our leisure (TV, Video games, music, multi-media), and our work. These in turn impact our relationships with other people. For example instead of coming home after work and spending time reading or talking we often drop in front of the TV – something that is by nature an isolating activity.

Technology also impacts our values. Children have access to violence, hate, and sex at a much younger age. Not long ago this was somewhat regulated by federal communications authorities that would filter or sensor content considered inappropriate for the public based on purportedly national values. We can clearly see that these values have become more liberal over the past decades. This liberalization does not stand on its own. The availability of multiple media types from magazines to TV to movies has greatly influenced it. It is in a capitalist society’s best interest to liberalize media as this in turn enables new business opportunities resulting in the financial gain that is its fundamental raison d’être. If you doubt this just consider the fact that for our economic system to be considered healthy it has to grow year over year, not in a linear but an exponential fashion. I’ll discuss this elsewhere because it is clearly an unsustainable model – nothing in the universe can sustain infinite growth. All systems stabilise either through crashes (Dot-Com bust) or through recessions / depressions.

There is yet another way that technology, tightly coupled with our economic model, influences our values. The quest for more. Early on in his book Collapse Diamond describes in detail the change in Montana’s environmental, economic, and social structures over a number of decades. He says,

“People used to expect no more of a farm than to feed themselves…”

When John Cook was growing up on a farm with his parents, “At dinnertime my mother was satisfied to go to the Orchard for asparagus, and as a boy I was satisfied for fun to go hunting and fishing. Now kids expect fast food and HBO; If their parents don’t provide that they feel deprived compared to their peers. In my day, a young adult expected to be poor for the next 20 years, and only thereafter, if you were lucky, might you end up more comfortable. Now, young adults expect to be comfortable early; a kids first questions about a job are, ‘what are the pay, the hours and the vacations?’

Technology; faster and more accessible travel, things to do with our time, demands more and more of our attention. Keeping up and doing what our colleagues at work or friends at school are doing takes up more and more of our time and financial resources. It is only recently that we have the leisure time we do. The farmer who was describing how he sometimes, at age 80, has to work from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m. is worried that his children won’t want to farm for that reason. Should they want to farm when easier, ‘less back-breaking’ work is available? Perhaps not. The point in this examination is not that we should return to “The Good ‘Ol Days” at all. There has been a shift in our socio-economic dynamic. We do not need to work long hours to earn a living. There is lots of time for leisure activities. The question I put to you and the reflection I ask of you is centered around how we are spending this newly acquired free time. Is a pure for-pleasure pursuit a valid, socially and personally beneficial, way to spend it?

War & Peace

2005-01-19T07:49:00.000-05:00

Literature Politics

War & Peace, a Russian novel, was written by Leo Tolstoy and published in 1869. His subjects include the life of the Russian privileged class, the War of 1812 when Napoleon invaded Russia and continued all the way to Moscow, and Tolstoy's own points of view which becomes clearer and clearer as the book progresses.

The early parts of the book deal with daily life, Russian high society, the pressures, hopes, and motivations of both the young and old. The primary focus has been on men and women in their twenties and early thirties with an emphasis on the men.

Exquisite suffering is the phrase that has come to mind as I have been reading over the past few days. The lives of some of our major characters have started to unravel. All their naive hopes and beliefs in success and the future are being challenged in a very harsh present. It is true of all of us that as we start out in our twenties all is possible and there is nothing but promise on the horizon. As we age and pass in to our thirties and approach forty (yes, I am talking from my perspective) we experience failures, become aware of our flaws and weaknesses, and are let down by others, our own values/principals and even ourselves.

Tolstoy's expression of what these people suffered in a time when hundreds of thousands of Russian men died in the war is crystal clear. It captures so well what suffering can be and how different people deal with it that you can't help but love the latter part of the book. No, I am not either a sadist or masochist. What the characters experience in suffering is, however, far more real and human than what they experience as they go about their daily lives, trying to meet this and that expectation that others and society have for them.

He captures the division in our lives between fantasy and reality. Fantasy where the artificial constructs of the given social order cause us to respond in essentially mechanistic and constrained ways, removing us from who we uniquely are. Reality where trauma and suffering strip us bare of whatever external façade we have constructed. Leaving only that which is essential remaining - who we truly are. This is, for me, the real beauty of the book. The rest of it was just a prelude to this finale - not the one where all is well, the hero returns victorious and marries the bride who is waiting for him but the one where our characters go on with their lives profoundly changed, no longer the children they once were.

A book worth reading.

Credibility problems

2003-03-25T07:35:00.000-05:00

Politics

I submitted this piece to the Comment section of The Globe and Mail and it was published! Here's the body:

By ASAD QURAISHI

Saturday, March 1, 2003 Page A18

Montreal -- I am all for the United Nations carrying out the penalties outlined in its resolutions vis-à-vis Iraq. I do not believe a toothless UN serves the world in the capacity it was created to serve.

This aside, it seems that George W. Bush does not have a "broad strategy underpinning a war against Iraq" at all. Instead he has chosen a plan of action and then sought reasons to support it.

His rhetoric on the war bringing peace to the region is ridiculous. If Mr. Bush had taken the same hard-line stance toward Israel that he has toward Iraq, and applied the same energies in seeking a peaceful solution to the issue of a Palestinian state that he has to justifying and planning war with Iraq, he would lend credence to his argument.

Although he may have chosen the right action in opposing Iraq's unwillingness to comply with UN resolutions for disarmament, he destroys his credibility by supporting his stance with conjured-up justifications.