Waxy.org has posted a page with many links to amateur tsunami video clips.
UPDATE - More tsunami video clips here.
Follow these links for up to the minute Outback Bowl coverage (I'm not optimistic with respect to the Badger's chances). Team Sites: Wisconsin Badgers | Georgia Bulldogs
alltheweb | Clusty | Google News | MSN Search | Teoma | Yahoo Search
The heart-attack risks of arthritis painkillers Vioxx, Bextra and Celebrex have exposed a regulatory "house of cards" at the Food and Drug Administration, wrote Dr. Eric J. Topol, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic.
"Unbridled promotion exacerbated the public health problem," Topol concluded. "The combination of mass promotion of a medicine with an unknown and suspect safety profile cannot be tolerated in the future." Read more here. Topol's Journal of American Medicine article: Arthritis Medicines and Cardiovascular Events—"House of Coxibs"
Background Links: alltheweb | Clusty | Google News | MSN Search | Teoma | Yahoo Search
Drug advertising has truly gone off the deep end. Driving down the beltline and seeing a nonsensical name on a billboard makes no sense.
Carol Ellison: "Opinion: Pennsylvania has given Big Broadband too much control over municipal wireless installations. Other states should not repeat the error."
The holidays, it seems, can't pass without a Scrooge story.Via Glenn Fleishman. I have a bit of hope that someone other than SBC will win Madison's WiFi RFP.This year's comes from the state of Pennsylvania where early this month Gov. Edward Rendell [Democrat] inked legislation that effectively left the future development of municipal wireless broadband services in that state in the hands of Big Broadband.
The bill lets incumbent carriers (in Pennsylvania, that would be Verizon) determine whether Pennsylvania cities can create— and charge for— municipal wireless access services. The new law came hot on the heels of Philadelphia's announcement that it planned to do just that. Now, it's up to Verizon to exercise thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Philadelphia's wireless ambitions. The company claims it won't scotch the city's plan. But what happens when Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton or Harrisburg decide to unwire?
Brad Boyston posted a link to an amateur South Asian tsunami video clip. More here.
Malcolm Gladwell pens a very useful look at prescription drug costs:
In the political uproar over prescription-drug costs, Nexium has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry. The big drug companies justify the high prices they charge--and the extraordinary profits they enjoy--by arguing that the search for innovative, life-saving medicines is risky and expensive. But Nexium is little more than a repackaged version of an old medicine. And the hundred and twenty dollars a month that AstraZeneca charges isn't to recoup the costs of risky research and development; the costs were for a series of clinical trials that told us nothing we needed to know, and a half-billion-dollar marketing campaign selling the solution to a problem we'd already solved. "The Prilosec pattern, repeated across the pharmaceutical industry, goes a long way to explain why the nation's prescription drug bill is rising an estimated 17 % a year even as general inflation is quiescent," the Wall Street Journal concluded, in a front-page article that first revealed the Shark Fin Project.
Richard Smith offers up some background, and links on the Comair shutdown this past weekend.
According to the article, Comair is running a 15-year old scheduling software package from SBS International (www.sbsint.com). The software has a hard limit of 32,000 schedule changes per month. With all of the bad weather last week, Comair apparently hit this limit and then was unable to assign pilots to planes.It's generally amazing things work as well as they do :) This example also demonstrates the importance of keeping software up to date....It sounds like 16-bit integers are being used in the SBS International scheduling software to identify transactions. Given that the software is 15 years old, this design decision perhaps was made to save on memory usage. In retrospect, 16-bit integers were probably not a wise choice.
Mathematicians have made a crochet model of chaos - and are challenging anyone else to repeat the effort according to the BBC.
Mike Klein wrote this now two year old article on a talk Epic Systems CEO Judy Faulkner gave at an Accelerate Madison meeting. This article provides a rather useful look at Epic's culture.
Shawn Young reviews some of the VOIP (voice over internet protocol) players. I've used packet8 for over a year, with great success. $19.95/month for unlimited local and long distance calling.
Walter Cronkite remembers 1944's Battle of the Bulge:
Sixty years ago this holiday season, the German army tried to push the Allies back one last time, as World War II neared its end in Europe. Earlier in 1944, the Allied army fought its way ashore at Normandy.AudioBut in December, German leader Adolf Hitler surprised the Allies with an offensive across Belgium and Luxembourg. By Christmas Eve, German forces had pushed the American defense line back 60 miles and trapped the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne.
EPIC just published their top 10 privacy resolutions for 2005. Very worthwhile reading. In a related development, EFF has released TOR, a software tool that bounces internet communications around "onion routers", which makes it hard for people to track your online activity.
Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty discusses the dangerous rise of the SUV. One of the issues Bradsher illuminated was the safety risk of young drivers & late model SUV's. Elizabeth Williamson tells the story of a 16 year old girl who died when she lost control of her 1999 Ford Explorer. Background links: alltheweb | Clusty | Google | Teoma | Yahoo Search |
Floating in about 4m of water off Makena, Maui, I was startled by the sudden appearance of a sea turtle, swimming out from nearby coral. He was less than 1 meter in front of me, as this 7MB Quicktime movie shows.
I was later told that some people feed them hot dogs, which unfortunately explains his proximity. I was advised to keep an eye on my fingers. Screen saver jpeg sea turtle image (215K). The images were captured with a Canon S70 digital camera and a WP-DC40 underwater case.
Kathleen Gallagher visit's Madison's Third Wave Technologies:
Since arriving at Third Wave, he has helped guide the closing of two of the company’s three production facilities and the departure of more than 200 employees, stanch the cash drain and transform its product line to emphasize higher-margin offerings.“He realized as a numbers person that getting profitable was the key to the success of the company,” said Daniel Kane, an analyst at the State of Wisconsin Investment Board. The pension plan manager is the biggest shareholder of Third Wave, holding 13% of its stock as of Sept. 30. “What they’ve been able to do in terms of developing more products and becoming more customer-focused, that’s something John has understood all along.”
At least initially, Puisis didn’t ask for the job. In October 2001, Third Wave chairman and founder Lance Fors hired Puisis, then an executive recruiter at Egon Zehnder International, to conduct a search for a new chief financial officer - a position the company had not filled even as it went through its IPO.
Well worth reading, Martha posts a Christmas message:
When one is incarcerated with 1,200 other inmates, it is hard to be selfish at Christmas -- hard to think of Christmases past and Christmases future -- that I know will be as they always were for me -- beautiful! So many of the women here in Alderson will never have the joy and wellbeing that you and I experience. Many of them have been here for years -- devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family.
Michael Dobbs was on the beach in Sri Lanka when "Something strange happened with the sea". Fascinating reading.
King is particularly proud of a recent project, Stacy Peralta’s big-wave surfing documentary Riding Giants, which this year became the first documentary ever to open the Sundance Film Festival. The film features King’s footage of tow-in avatar Hamilton surfing sixty-foot beasts at Jaws. "It was one of the best swells there ever," King remembers. "Perfect, perfect waves, and super huge. Riding Giants is a really entertaining, well-made film, and the stuff we shot that day is some of the most amazing surfing I’ve ever been part of. It still takes my breath away."
For despite the fact that farm income has doubled in two years, federal subsidies have also gone up nearly 40 percent over the same period - projected at $15.7 billion this year, and $130 billion over the last nine years. And that bounty is drawing fire from people who say that at this moment of farm prosperity, the nation's subsidy system has never made less sense.Timothy Egan reviews a topic that SHOULD be discussed and acted upon in Washington.Even those deeply steeped in the system acknowledge it seems counterintuitive. "I struggle with the same question: how the hell can you have such high government payments if farmers had such a great year?" said Keith Collins, the chief economist for the Agriculture Department
"Lands' End was one of the most brilliant brands of the 20th century, and under Sears, one of the most irrelevant brands of the 21st century," said Burt Flickinger III, managing partner at the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consultant in New York. "Lands' End in the Sears stores is poorly positioned in between men's suits, snow blowers, tools, denim and work clothes."It seems obvious that Lands End will be spun off or sold at some point.As for bringing Lands' End products into the Kmart stores, Mr. Flickinger said: "J. Crew, Eddie Bauer and Abercrombie & Fitch would never stand to have their brand image eroded by going down-market to Kmart. Kmart is associated more with a rough-and-tumble blue-collar consumer."
Yesterday's exciting Packer-Viking game generated no shortage of commentary around the web. Check out these links:
Doug Kern remixes the Classic Christmas Carol with contemporary characters.
Tom Heinen summarizes Christmas messages from local & national Christian leaders.
Starbucks installed these waterfree urinals in their Seattle Headquarters in an effort to conserve water & energy, according to Brand Autopsy.
Extending optical fiber into the home wasn't labor intensive, she said. The most crucial part of the experiment was the testing to make sure the new equipment and network were reliable, she said.Note that this is NOT fiber to the home, rather it's fiber to the node. DSL speeds will be faster, but hardly competitive with the services now available in Japan, Korea and other more advanced countries. SBC can certainly do better. Note that the speeds should be 2 way.The next step for SBC is to begin a $4 billion installation project that will put fiber in the company's networks throughout the country. Connecticut is very much part of that project, which is why Norwalk was part of the field test, Esposito said.
In existing neighborhoods, SBC says it plans to use FTTN architecture, which means "fiber to the -node." That system brings optical fiber to a central point in a neighborhood, within 3,000 feet of homes already being served.
Gallup found that more and more consumers under the age of 65 are using the internet for shopping. The average online transaction grew 10% to $140.00.
Paul McHugh on skiing's next frontier:
Kites may do for winter sports what they're already accomplishing for windsurfing. Six years ago, big U-shaped kites were a rare sight at windsurfing spots. Conventional triangular sails attached to masts and boards dominated the scene. Now, at Bay Area sites like Crissy Field, Coyote Point and even rough offshore spots like Waddell and Scott Creek, it's easy to see kites bobbing in the sky while riders on small, twin-tip boards skip nimbly over the waves.According to longtime snowkiter Ken Lucas, utilizing wind power with a kite on snow may wind up even more popular than on water.
Check out this gorgeous Quicktime VR Scene, shot from the 3rd floor of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Eric Rougier
Consumers Union has released a new telecommunications and media online resource: www.hearusnow.org. Check it out. Consumer tips on what to do before you buy, understanding your bills after and making companies listen when you are unhappy (from phone services to copyright rules on digital content).
There's been some discussion recently about eliminating the deductability of state & local taxes on our federal returns. Naturally, this would really pinch taxpayers in relatively high tax states, like Wisconsin. Check out the discussions, here: alltheweb | Clusty | google | msn | teoma | yahoo search |
SpaceShipOne designer Burt Rutan is interviewed by George Nemiroff:
Question: Considering your motivation to innovate and design futuristic air/spacecraft, are you attracted to the Centennial Prizes offered by NASA to develop new craft designs?Slashdot DiscussionAnswer: Oh no, I don’t believe NASA can properly put out a (developmental) prize like the Orteg Prize or the Kramer Prize, or either the X Prize. NASA has a real habit of trying to help sub-contractors and contractors by monitoring risks that NASA wouldn’t take themselves. What NASA needs to do is to put out a very difficult goal to achieve and then not monitor it at all and let those that go after it take their own risks. I don’t see NASA doing that. Possibly they will. Maybe they will put someone in charge that knows the benefits of running a prize properly. I haven’t seen that yet.
I wonder if this is what we'll get from local telco monopoly SBC if they win the Madison WiFi RFP:
If everything goes as planned, the telephone industry will be all about television in 2005. TV over your home phone line. TV on your cell phone. Few topics have been as popular this past year among phone companies and their technology partners.I don't think shoving conventional TV down SBC customer's throats via DSL (will it ever be as fast as Japan or Korea's service?) makes any sense.... As I said, an answer in search of a question. Clueless.
Several recent articles highlight the ongoing problem of state & local taxes growing faster than Wisconsin personal income:
"My options are to work until I'm 75 or 80 or sell my home and move south like three of my friends have," she said.) Via Patrick Marley & Steven Walters.
Patrick Sauer summarizes his drive of a new Honda Accord V-6 Hybrid:
The new Accord V-6 Hybrid--that's right, V-6 Hybrid--cruises out this winter and with it, a whole new way of looking at cars will follow in its wake. It used to be one or the other, V-6 power or four-banger mileage. But the super-geniuses at Honda have corralled an additional 15 horses under this Accord Hybrid's hood (up to 255 hp) for those who like having their six cylinders but are feeling the pain at the pumps -- by the way, this car will never, ever need to be plugged in. And here's the best part, with that main course of horsepower comes a free side of better mileage--up from 24 city and 34 highway in the standard V-6 to 30 and 37 in the Hybrid. That means 633 miles per tank, in the fast lane--talk about wallet weight gain, ka ching.
Sun Microsystems Executive Jonathan Schwartz writes a blog (which is a rather big deal). His most recent post summarizes the sales challenges when competitors are writing Sun's obituary. Schwartz's story is quite useful and interesting:
The customer started by telling us what our competitors had been saying about Sun, our platforms, and our future over the past two years. HP told him Sun was going out of business. IBM told him the future was all about linux, and that Sun was all about lock-in. Both competitors expressed a sympathetic concern that we weren't "going to make it." How charitable. The CIO wanted to know why they were wrong. This was going to be one of those "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" sessions. And we got right into it.He told me consolidation was his number one priority. That's why they were standardizing on HP. I asked "Which systems?" He responded "their enterprise systems." I asked, "Itanium?" Wondering why they'd introduce a fork (new apps, new OS, new skills, and the expense of porting) if they were trying to consolidate platforms. He said they weren't interested in Itanium. "No way, we're going with PA-RISC." I asked, "But isn't that an end of life'd platform?" Silence. "Well, yes, I guess it would be." How times change. Maybe HP had a specialty service for dead platform consolidation.
30 years of industrial photography, by Kevin Scanlon. Well worth a visit.
J.P. Vettraino summarizes his picks for 2005's hottest cars. His interesting picks include cars that many of us might consider, such as the Accord Hybrid and the MazdaSpeed 6 (I'm more of a used car fan for many reasons, mainly cost).
Adrants has an interesting look at magazine publishers attempts to organize and offer a better value for advertisers than the former king of the universe - TV.
Laura Miller evidently has her hands full, though I'm glad she did not give away the store to the Cowboys (looking for a large subsidy for their new stadium). Ralph Blumenthal checks out the Big D:
The losing Cowboys are fixing to defect again, the police chief and city manager were shown the door, a 350-pound gorilla made his own grand exit, and the hometown daily, former employer of the ex-reporter now ensconced in City Hall, is pinning Pulitzer Prize hopes on a pitiless exposé of everything gone wrong
Speaking of the passion in running a small business... This is great!
To make it easier for state legislatures to pass anti-municipal broadband laws, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has a piece of anti-municipal broadband model legislation entitled the "Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act". You can view the document here (Word format).
I'm rather certain that many Lands End folks would be happy (and relieved) if the Sears/K-Mart folks spun them off..... Doris Hajewski reviews analysts views on this matter.
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Today's 3 degree (did it get that warm?) Madison weather means it's time to visit Kona, Hawaii and take a look at Dan McSweeney's: Captain Dan's Eco-Tours. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the art and study of whale watching. Dan has taken his passion - marine biology - and made a life's work out of it along with a real business. He also brings a certain art, or style to the whale watch process.
Listened to Mark Knopfler's latest: Boom Like That early today. Every now and then, I end up paying attention to the lyrics. In this song, Knopfler tells a bit of the Ray Kroc story.
Falling further behind in true broadband services (2-way high speed internet), Ohio is evidently giving it up to the incumbent telco's (SBC and others) via a bill to prevent municipal high speed networks.
WEAC:
The Wisconsin Education Association Council and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators annual survey of school administrators uncovered a new trend in the 2003-2004 school year: districts are being forced to cut academic programs because of state-imposed revenue controls. Revenue controls severely limit the funds school districts can raise and spend.
John Borland reports that NTT/DoCoMo is testing wireless cell system downloads with speeds up to 1GBPS..... We're far, far behind that.
Meanwhile, David Isenberg notes that we're now 15th in per capita broadband penetration.
As 2004 draws to a close, the the State Department of Revenue and local media has published several interesting tax articles:
The biggest bite to Wisconsin taxpayers comes from the property tax, which generates 41.7 percent of all tax collections, a new state study finds.But many lower-income property taxpayers are not using the credits available to save them money, the Department of Revenue report said.
"Property taxes were regressive across all household groups," the study says. The poorest 20 percent paid an average 5.3 percent of their incomes in property taxes, while the highest income groups spent an average of 4 percent of their incomes on property taxes.
The state Department of Revenue report, released today, calls the system that collected $15.1 billion in state and local taxes in 2001 "mildly progressive across households." Officials said the 2001 tax burden was studied because the tax code hasn't been rewritten since and complete data was available for that year.Overall, property and sales taxes tend to hit low-income households hardest but are "offset" by deductions, graduated tax rates and breaks built into the state income tax system, the report adds. It defined a "progressive" tax system as one in which "households with greater income pay a larger share of their income in taxes than poorer households."
"According to FOIA documents obtained by EPIC new Postal Service self-service postage machines take portrait-style photographs of customers and retain them for 30 days." IBM is the contractor behind the kiosks. Note that the kiosk is supposed to not complete the transaction if it determines the photograph has been compromised, so simply covering the camera is unlikely to work. As the cost of cameras and digital storage approaches zero, is it inevitable that every machine you interact with will take your photograph and store it? Via Slashdot.
Interesting contrast to the Miller Park scheme hatched in Milwaukee & Madison some years ago, DC Common Council Chairman Linda Cropp has added some reality to the District's deal with Major League Baseball:
At the John A. Wilson Building, anxiety over the future of baseball in Washington was evident all day. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) pronounced during his morning news conference that the deal was "in great, great jeopardy." Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D), the architect of the legislative amendment that required private funding, said she was "looking to reduce the cost and risk for the District."David Nakamura and Thomas Heath"I keep hearing that we had a deal with baseball," Cropp said. "Well, I have had a 30-year-plus deal with the citizens of this city. That deal trumps any other consideration with Major League Baseball."
Security expert Bruce Schneier summarizes sensible personal computing safety tips here.
Duke's law school recently ran a contest that asked entrants to create short films demonstrating some of the tensions between art and intellectual property law, and the intellectual property issues artists face, focusing on either music or documentary film. Take a look here. Via Cory Doctorow.
Dan Neil pens one of the more brutal car reviews I've seen: The 2005 Mercury Montego: "Mercury's throwback makes everything new feel old again".
Megan Krug continues her series on the economic impact of the Overture Center.
Kira Sparks has an update on the proposed TABOR legislation.
I recently drove a couple of versions of the latest Chrysler Minivans: a basic short body length car and a longer Town & Country version (rentals). My quick thoughts:
Today the Milwaukee Journal has a story about the state's no bid
website for the Marquette Interchange project. $685,000!!!!?
Philadelphia's fascinating Barnes Foundation is set to move downtown (from the Main Line) to Museum Row. Virtual Properties has a VR scene of the exterior here. Founder Albert C. Barnes, a patent medicine millionaire, never wanted this - he loathed the downtown art crowd. Visit the Barnes before it moves... Carol Vogel has more. Background links: Alltheweb Clusty Google MSN TeomaYahoo Search
"Everything these days doesn't have to be a tourist trap."
Atlanta is rolling out wifi across municipal facilities, according to Glenn Fleishman:
A big chunk of City Hall unwires this month, and chunks of the Atlanta airport by March 2005. A private firm has contracted with Atlanta to add Wi-Fi to city buildings, but will also continue its own rollout at private locations like hotels and retail stores. This is an interesting partnership, because the city’s stamp on the Wi-Fi carrier, Biltmore Communications, and the branding of the service as Atlanta FastPass should make it a much easier sell for private parties to want to climb on this particular bandwagon.Meanwhile, Megan Costello has more on Madison's WiFi plans.
David Isenberg emailed me and PLEADED that the Madison folks make this a free WiFi service as he rarely pays for it any more (other than hotels). That is largely my experience. There's often a free hotspot available in the big cities (I parked recently in San Francisco prior to a meeting and fired up my laptop, only to find several free WiFi hotspots).
I think any local WiFi network based on subscriptions will be a challenge.
Dave Farber forwarded Jurik Martin's email regarding the impression the current airport security mess makes on visitors:
The collective agony is compounded because to complain publicly is not allowed any more when the issue is national security, even if its implementation is far from perfect. It is, for example, patently obvious that Dulles does not have enough security gates, but to point this out could mean a one way ticket to Guantánamo.It would also be unwise to ask if it is always entirely necessary to half undress before passing through screening, frozen-footed, clutching belt-less trousers, boarding passes and government-issued identification clenched between teeth.
Last month I witnessed a security agent ordering a mother to pass a three-month-old separately through screening (by rolling the child through, perhaps).
Wyland is battling the destuction of a Milwaukee whale mural he painted in the late 1990's. Background links: Alltheweb Clusty Google MSN TeomaYahoo Search
Tim Kelley summarized a recent letter on Madison's downtown development trends from local developer Kenton Peters. [I'd like to link to it, but their articles go offline rather quickly]. Peters likely makes some useful points on the City's "development process", however, I for one, do not want to see another Peters building inflicted on the city. Peters' federal courthouse (the blue silo version) and the WARF monster on University Avenue are surely more than sufficient eyesores. Background links: Alltheweb Clusty Google MSN TeomaYahoo Search
Cris Prystay discusses the growing use of the Singapore Math curriculum in US schools.
John Moore summarizes Dunkin Donuts' strategy to take on starbucks: sell latte's faster (time from order to delivery) and cheaper than Starbucks.
Larry Rohter takes us to Brazil where he explores the world's new breadbasket.
Sometime over the next decade or so, Brazil, which Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described as "an agricultural superpower" during a visit in October, hopes to pass the United States as the world's largest agricultural producer. But the trend is far broader and can be felt also in parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay, with a deep impact on the region's economy and environment. And it has spurred a debate that has mainly focused on expansion into areas where the Amazon rainforest is thought to be jeopardized.Related Links: Alltheweb Clusty Google Teoma Yahoo"There has been a silent revolution in the countryside" since the 1990's, Brazil's minister of agriculture, Roberto Rodrigues, said in an interview in the capital, Brasília. The past four or five years in particular, he said, have been "characterized by spectacular growth and a huge increase in demand" abroad for foodstuffs, which has given Brazil "the capacity to compete with anyone."
Chicago's George R. Lawrence used his captive airship to take aerial photographs of San Francisco just after the 1906 earthquake. Take a look at these fascinating photographs here. More on Lawrence.
The State of Wisconsin Department of Administration Friday issued this RFP:
REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) For CITYWIDE WIFI ACCESS And DESIGN, INSTALL, OPERATE, MANAGE, MAINTAIN AND MARKET A COMMON WIRELESS ACCESS SYSTEM (CWAS) for DANE COUNTY REGIONAL AIRPORT [654K PDF]
I'll post some comments after I've had a chance to review the document. Let's hope this flies in a citizen friendly way (rather than the recent anti-citizen legislation that was passed in Pennsylvania).
It's due January 10th, 2005. I wonder what the odds are on a SBC win (SBC is the incumbent, all powerful local telco. Local player TDS perhaps has a shot, along with others).
Esme Vos has already posted comments on the RFP. Via Glenn Fleishman
David Bernhardt offers some rather clear thinking on sports & society, in light of the recent Detroit NBA fight, steroids and the NHL strike:
What are our expectations of these athletes and our own son and daughters? Hopefully, it is to watch them compete, have fun and perform to the best of their natural ability. When society begins to focus on winning at all costs, we see where the fun leaves the sport, performance enhancement cheating begins and frustration of continual expectation boil over in an unexpected violence. In addition, the rapid firing of college coaches from an upstanding university where the student-athletes were students first and athletes second, makes one again question the values of the institutions of higher learning.
Something for local officials to consider as they attempt to deploy pervasive wireless internet (2 way) across Dane County. Scott Bradner sees Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Ed Rendell's signature of a law that requires cities to ask permission from telco's before deploying their own networks as an ugly indicator of things to come. Via David Isenberg.
Allen Bukoff on the great hype behind hybrid cars. Hybrids have a great reputation now, but Bukoff says that the piper will be paid when the batteries must be replaced when the cars are out of warranty (and their used car value will plunge).
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Governor Doyle's recently announced plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on biotech initiatives evidently faces a small problem - the money must be found. Paul Gores digs in.
I think the state should focus on basically two things:
David Hackworth writes that army recruiters are falling far short of targets. He muses a bit on what's next.
Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy is noted for his viewpoints on a variety of topics. One of my favorites is this: "The quality of a Company's software has an inverse relationship to the amount of money spent on marketing."
I often use this quote when speaking about our products and services as we try to be a function over form type of company. There are others like this, including Sybase. Sybase is not a household name vis a vis it's database competitors such as Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. However, it's software runs some of the largest financial institutions along with our products.
Interestingly, Microsoft's very popular SQL server was originally based on Sybase's database (MS did a licensing deal with Sybase in the 1990's. I wonder if Sybase would do that again today?)
Sybase is taking a bit more of an aggressive posture with small business opportunities. They now have a free linux version available. There are some limitations on this product (memory and database size), but for many projects, it's potentially great place to start.
Free doesn't pay the bills, so they do need to have a realistic glide path from "free" for a low end implementation to a pricing model that small businesses can actually afford. These are interesting times for many tech firms.
R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student."i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
Hundreds of inquiries from managers and executives seeking to improve their own or their workers' writing pop into Hogan's computer in-basket each month, he says, describing a number that has surged as e-mail has replaced the phone for much workplace communication. Millions of employees must write more frequently on the job than previously. And many are making a hash of it.
"E-mail is a party to which English teachers have not been invited," Hogan said. "It has companies tearing their hair out."
Willy Kaemena just posted a gorgeous Christmas Quicktime VR Scene from Bremen.
For more than a year, I have been predicting—not advocating, just predicting—a significant tax increase to deal with the budget deficit. My hypothesis has been that sooner or later financial markets would put pressure on Congress to act on the budget deficit, and that the magnitude of the problem would be too great to deal with on the spending side alone.I was unsure where, when or how this financial market pressure would arise. But it now seems clear that it will come through the foreign exchange market. The dollar has been dropping rapidly and this is setting in motion forces that eventually will impact on domestic stock and bond markets. The possibility of a major crash cannot be ignored.
The root of the problem is the U.S. current account deficit, which includes the trade balance for goods and services, plus receipts on U.S. investments broad minus payments to foreigners on their investments here. There is also a large negative figure for unilateral transfers abroad, such as those for military programs and foreign aid.
June Kronholz summarizes the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment, which finds that:
The percentage of top-achieving math students in the nation is about half that of other industrialized countries, and the gap between scores of whites and minority groups -- who will make up an increasing share of the labor force in coming decades -- is enormous.Here's the report. Slashdot discussion.
Norm Brodsky offers up some useful tips on employee retention in his article: "Pennies from Heaven".
I'm giving the latest iPod photo a try. This mp3 player also includes the ability to store and display photos (including the optional storage of the large, original image files - which makes it a handy backup device). It also will playback slideshows through your TV, along with music.
I also have the first iPod (5GB). It's rather amazing to think that the latest ipod is a bit smaller, yet holds 12X the music and/or photos. So far, I've been quite impressed with it (I've dropped it a few times, including on a tradmill). It just works :)
Michael Arndt wrote about Kraft's possible sale of Oscar Meyer several weeks ago. Avrum Lank keeps the thread going this morning.
iPods, personal mixes and to a lesser degree satellite radio are evidently cutting into traditional radio listeners time tuned in. I actually think that most radio stations have become ad vehicles rather than creative outlets. For example, I used to listen to 105.5 (triple m in Madison) rather frequently. However, the past two years, I listen to our fine student station 91.7, WSUM and my iPod. 105.5 has no shortage of commercials and a reasonably predictable playlist (they do offer up new music periodically).
The best station, hands down is Fordhams WFUV, available via mp3 stream.
Michael Booth says that Denver stations are trying to change.....
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Carolyn Said takes a look at the greeting card business.
Lots of data around to show that all organizations must consider where and how they spend their marketing and advertising dollars:
Take a look at these gorgeous aerial photos - shot by remote controlled airplanes.
Perhaps my mind fails me, but in years past, I recall receiving a pleasant marketing letter from the Mayor extolling the hard work that went into limiting the annual increases in our property tax bills. This year, I found only the bill. I've emailed the Mayor's office asking for comments on this.
Perhaps, given the size of this year's increases, they did not want to be that closely identified with the tax bills? (OTOH, eliminating the letter does save a few dollars).
Great fun watching the University of Wisconsin Women's Volleyball stage an impressive first period rally to beat Notre Dame 36-34, 30-16 and 30-16 Saturday night at the Field House.
The Badgers advance to the NCAA Regional semifinals played at the Resch Center in Green Bay, Wis., Friday evening. Wisconsin will take on third-seeded Hawaii Women's Volleyball (30-0) with the winner moving on to play either Texas Women's Volleyball (26-4) or Stanford Women's Volleyball (26-6) in the regional final. For ticket information, call 1-800-895-0071.
I smile at the thought of Hawaii, Texas and Stanford joining the UW in Green Bay (Resch Center) next weekend :)
You can follow the NCAA finals here.
Yesterday's property tax bill (including not small increases in local and school taxes) along with recent articles on the China Price and Milwaukee's loss of unskilled labor jobs serve to remind Wisconsin residents of the real issues facing our state:
Unsurprisingly, there's no shortage of comments on this week's steriod use disclosures by Jason Giambi and a sort of disclosure by Barry Bonds (from grand jury testimony). I've compiled quite a few links: Alltheweb | Clusty | Google News | Teoma | Yahoo Search
Michael Hunt pens a refreshing column taking baseball, Bud Selig and the MLB player's union to task for not addressing the problem. Nice to see a more realistic approach from the journal-sentinel after their strange Miller Park cheerleading.
The folks at brand autopsy take a useful look at the many alternatives available to godaddy.com vs. a one time, expensive superbowl ad. Interesting reading.
I noticed a number of "property tax" searches in my logs today. I imagine it has something to do with the increases we're all seeing this year. Alan Borsuk reviews the data, and provides a useful chart on school spending around the state. It's interesting to see Madison's total tax receipts compared to other areas.
Toyota is showing off some robots, or mechanized mobility units. These robots are designed to help disabled people move around. Via Gizmodo.
Lance Williams, Mark Fainaru-Wada for the 2nd day reveal grand jury testimony in the BALCO case. This time, it's Barry Bonds:
Barry Bonds told a federal grand jury that he used a clear substance and a cream supplied by the Burlingame laboratory now enmeshed in a sports doping scandal, but he said he never thought they were steroids, The Chronicle has learned.It will be interesting to see how Milwaukee based commissioner Bud Selig deals with this.....Federal prosecutors charge that the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, known as BALCO, distributed undetectable steroids to elite athletes in the form of a clear substance that was taken orally and a cream that was rubbed onto the body.
Powerful stuff: Andrew Jakowleff has published several VR scenes from Kiev. Check it out.
This makes sense. True, 2 way broadband should be a public good, like roads and local utilities. Danish IT executive Finn Helmer has urged his government to bring fiber to every home. David Isenberg has more.
Mark Fainaru-Wada, Lance Williams break the steriod testimony of ex Athletics and current NY Yankee slugger Jason Giambi's grand jury testimony that he injected himself with human growth hormone in 2003 and had earlier started using steroids.
David Isenberg references a broadband report that tells us that Japan, with half the population has about 10 times as many fiber to the home installations as the US.
At the same time, naturally, entrenched telcos are successfully lobbying to kill local givernment's ability to deploy municipal broadband services. This is bad news all around. SBC certainly has not been rushing to bring Wisconsin broadband services up to 21st century standards. Nope, we're stuck in the 1990's here. Jonathan Kim takes a look at the telco lobbying... Xeni has many links on Philadelphia's plans to offer free or low cost wifi access and the deal that Verizon cut with Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's Democratic governor to give them the right to veto any other municipal broadband plans.
The Wisconsin Department of Revenue continues to pursue local banks that have setup subsidiaries in Nevada to avoid Wisconsin's 7.9% state corporate tax rate. More power to the DOR, but the $26M in settlements seems rather small. I wonder if this is done for effect? Paul Gores has more.
Eric Rougier has posted a gorgeous full screen Quicktime VR scene from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Enjoy.Quicktime.
This New York Investment Firm sent this letter to President Bush, advocating a change in US energy policy and taxes. Alger's proposal makes sense:
"Beginning in 2008, any car or SUV that cannot meet a fuel efficiency standard of 30 miles per gallon will have to pay a tax of $1,000 per year." And the tax could generate "as much as $200 billion in revenue" in its first year, and "may increase in subsequent years," the letter says. The money management firm says that one of the biggest issues for Americans is the soaring price of gasoline and that the prospects for lower gas prices are not likely due to increasing demand from U.S. consumers, as well as soaring demand from nations such as China and soon from India. Alger asked President Bush to set a national goal of cutting gasoline consumption in half over the next 10 years. This, they say, needs to be adopted quickly in order to reduce America's dependency on Middle Eastern oil, which "allows U.S. motives to be questioned, fairly or not. Reducing gasoline consumption and increasing our energy independence will enhance not only our economic and military security but also ensure that the legitimacy of our foreign policy is not undermined by our energy needs."Read the enter document [278K PDF]
This long American Journalism Review article on troubles at the LA Times made me think about the question media critics consistently dodge: What strategies are realistically available when you're caught in a declining industry, which the metropolitan daily newspaper most assuredly is? How do you sell localism--local news, local advertising, locally produced articles on national subjects--in a market saturated with cheap substitutes whose quality has been tested in national competition? What niche can you fill?Frank Ahrens has more on the recent circulation scandals.
