Eclectic Views

    

   The Cavalry Arrives (Wearing Suits)

The Software Freedom Law Center has been created with $4 million in seed
money from the Open Source Development Labs sponsored by IBM, Intel, H-P,
and others.  Its purpose is to "anticipate and avoid legal pitfalls" by
open-source developers, and to "minimize the risk that developers and users
will be sued".  SCO's famous $1 billion suit against IBM is said to be a
driving force behind the SFLC for its potential chilling effect on people
and companies thinking of getting into the field but fearful of litigation.


   And You Thought Transistors Were Small Already

Blah blah thousand transistors today one human hair, blah blah..  H-P
researchers have created "crossbar junctions" essential to switching
operations at a molecular scale, one trillion of them in a square
centimeter.  Details will appear shortly in the Journal of Applied Physics.
While the technology is not yet ripe for full-scale manufacture (estimated
in about five years), the announcement is expected to give a boost to the
field which was lagging after "a burst of progress" at the end of the last
millennium.  It has the potential to be a breakthrough, since up to now the
smaller the circuits got the greater the difficulties from heat buildup and
quantum fluctuations.  Developer William Kuekes' statement wins the

   Quote Of The Day

"We wanted to find a technology in which quantum effects would be our
friend."
  

    

   About What? About Four Hundred Million

About.com is being offered for sale by its owner Primedia for $350-500 M,
with bids expected from AOL, AskJeeves, Google, and the New York Times.
Goldman Sachs is managing the auction which has been underway for a month.
Primedia, a division of the normally savvy merger and acquisition firm
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, bought it in October 2000 for $690 million; it was
founded in 1996 as the Mining Company.


   Dual-Core Chips On The Way

Perhaps responding to the buzz over the new Cell CPU chip from IBM and
others, Intel says it will start shipping its new two-processor chips by the
end of June and expects the type to constitute half of its chips sold by
next year.


   Name That Monkey

Forget baseball stadiums and freeways; how'd you like to have a monkey named
after yourself?  Well maybe you wouldn't (and who would blame you?) but you
could, if you outbid everybody else in the Wildlife Conservation Society
auction at www.charityfolks.com.  A couple of biologists in Bolivia have
discovered a new species of the Callicebus monkey, nicknamed the titi monkey
perhaps because of its large er never mind, anyway they donated naming
rights to the society which says it will apply the proceeds to support the
Madidi Park where the creature was found. There are some limits on what you
can name it according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
(who knew?), but in general as long as it is not "openly offensive" you can
pretty much pick what you like. Before you decide to name it after an ex-
spouse or the president, I should mention it actually looks kind of cute in
the picture; it's described as "about 15 inches high, weighs about 2 pounds,
and has fluffy fur with gold, orange, and burgundy colors".
  

    

   H-P CEO Is O-U-T

I just heard on the radio that Carly Fiorina has resigned immediately over
"differences" with the board; whether she jumped or was pushed is being
debated.
  

    

No it's not.  She was pushed.  She was asked to resign by the board and she
did.
  

    
Here's what the BBC says:

  Fiorina resigns as chief of HP

"Carly Fiorina, the chairman and chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has
resigned. Ms Fiorina, one of America's most powerful businesswomen, said she
was leaving after a dispute with the company's board over future strategy."
  

    
That means "fired".
  

    

   Lunch chez Google

The surging search firm held a presentation for financial analysts yesterday
with four hours of speeches from the likes of the company's chef Charles
Ayers on the composition of the menu which included grilled pork tenderloin.
Not grilled however was the chief financial officer who "moderated the
presentation and answered a few questions but did not give a formal talk."
Several of the attendees, hungry for facts more than tournedos, expressed
themselves unsated: "They had a formal presentation by their chef but not
their CFO; I've never been to an investor day where the CFO didn't speak",
one told reporters afterwards.  Besides the Chief Kitchen Officer, CEO Eric
Schmidt laid out priority areas for Google, some of them a bit unsettling.
For example, he plans to gather more personal data about each visitor: "We
are moving to a Google that knows more about you", as he put it.  Hmmm..
Asked why the company spends resources on the Keyhole initiative to display
satellite photos of the earth while its e-mail and news projects remain in
beta, he responded enigmatically "we are not quite as unconventional as we
appear", and that mathematician-cofounder Sergey Brin had "proved" that the
division of resources was optimal. (Of course, the Nobel Prize-winning
economist founder of Long-Term Capital Management proved his hedge fund
could thrive in any interest-rate environment just before it collapsed.)
Moving right along here, Mr. Brin's presentation focused on staff-
recruitment efforts after the IPO deflated the value of employee stock
options: he talked some more about the food again - what is with these
people, I thought they lived on pizza and Jolt - and "on-site oil changes"
available to employees, presumably for their cars but quite possibly for
their woks and deep fryers as well.


   Like A Square Brown Bagpipe On Wheels

United Parcel Service is to begin testing a prototype delivery truck with a
revolutionary new type of transmission; to quote from the story in the
paper, "the vehicle's diesel engine will create pressure of 5000 PSI in a
tank ... that will drive a turbine that in turn will drive the wheels."
Eventual mass production of the system should produce a truck that costs
about $5000 more but saves $2500 a year on fuel on UPS routes. If it works,
it will offer several benefits to the owners of delivery vans and the like.
The engine should run at a much more constant speed to maintain pressure in
the tank, compared with the wide swings in RPM of stop-and-go driving; just
as a bagpiper maintains constant pressure in that bag thingie whether
playing loud or soft, if they ever play soft, well whatever. The more
constant speed should also drastically reduce exhaust emissions for the 6-
liter 170-horsepower engine (smaller versions are planned for lighter uses
if this one works). The vehicle is also designed to regain pressure when
braking, as pressure in the tank is built up from the wheels in a form of
engine braking; gas-electric hybrids have a similar mechanism, but the story
says it's much less efficient since "batteries cannot absorb current fast
enough" and much braking charge goes to waste heat.  The difference is said
to be about 75% recapture for the bagpipe-van vs. 35-40% for the hybrid.
Another advantage over hybrids is that the latter require two drive trains,
one for each power source, adding to the initial and maintenance costs.
Where the bagvan loses its lead is in vehicles used for long hauls at
relatively constant cruising speeds.  The prototype is being developed by
Eaton and the EPA; Ford earlier planned to put a fleet of bag-SUVs out by
2010, but they say now they are concentrating on gas-electric hybrids.
  

    
The Google item is food for thought. The UPS item is really neat!
  

    
Can I post the UPS infor over in Cars? We've got an alternate fuel
topic for which it would be perfect.
  

    
> Can I post the UPS info over in Cars?

Sure, go ahead.  It's also in the biztech conference today.
  

    
Thanks
  

    

   Pity The Pundits

Hard times, industry consolidation, layoffs; such is the lot these days of
IT prognosticators like the Meta Group (recently gobbled up by Gartner),
Forrester Research, and International Data. And the story doesn't even
mention the Yankee Group; I wonder what happened to them. True, they have
collective revenue of about $2 billion a year, but those 30%-plus annual
growth rates of the nineties boom are *so* over, and the industry is still
down about 6% from three years ago. And competition is growing, as IT
companies in other areas like IBM and Cap Gemini get into the business. Nor
has the threat of scandal and conflict-of-interest passed them by: some
prospective clients are suggesting that their "reports, some of them
corporate-sponsored, helped inflate the previous bubble".
  

    

   Blogging For Bucks

Suits discover blogs: for many years Wall Street and other investment types
sponsored in-house research on stocks and publicly held companies, but
following the Internet bust and scandals which showed some firms used their
research teams to tout losers, many of them have reduced or eliminated their
staff since customers don't believe them any more and for some reason they
won't pay to be lied to. Enter the hive mind: the San Francisco "boutique
investment bank" ThinkEquity Partners is opening its own Web log today at
http://www.thinkequity.com/blog to invite the unwashed masses to rate stocks
like restaurants in Zagat surveys.  Bank co-founder Michael Moe (do not ask
him about co-founders Larry and Curly) says "Our mission is to identify and
partner with the stars of tomorrow" and that Red Herring ex-editor Tony
Perkins put the idea in his head. What he doesn't say but has probably been
thinking is that recent SEC regulations make it harder for analysts to use
back-channel nonpublic communications with insiders to identify upcoming
stars unless they want to risk trading their pinstripes for orange
jumpsuits. Blogs by their nature are public and fairly immune to charges of
private disclosure.  How well they will work in this context is yet to be
seen.  Research analysts say they will prove worthless (quel surprise), but
rating books that way at Amazon has turned out to be useful; and recently
Robert Lutz, a vice-chairman at GM opened a blog "so he could have a more
nuanced conversation with people about the automotive industry".
  

    
When you say "nuanced conversation" are you saying that it's an interactive
blog?  Does he use a comments feature, or take email comments?
  

    

   Smart Phones

Evidently smarter than the owners, whom they will be teaching.  Publisher
Random House has bought an interest in San Diego startup Vocel who "offers
educational content to subscribers over cellphones for a monthly fee".
Initially the curriculum will consist of the Living Language program for
learning a foreign language and Prima Games strategy guides, starting this
summer. Vocel already offers SAT test preparation for about $6 a month.


   Help Wanted

Hewlett-Packard says it has commenced the search for a new CEO, after
booting out what's-her-name. While it would make an interesting reality TV
program, the company plans to conduct it more discreetly with the help of
executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates.


   European Software-Patent Law Fails

Presently, the 25 member countries of the European Union do not allow patent
protection for software.  Last May, they agreed in principle to a new law
which would provide it, but since then several countries have "backed away"
from the agreement.  Last week the European Parliament rejected the proposal
and required deliberations to start again from the beginning, with a new
draft to be presented within one year.


   It's About Times

The New York Times Company has purchased the "fast-growing highly profitable
Web site" About.com for $140 million from its owner Primedia. The combined
operation with the Times' own site will be "the 12th-largest presence on the
Internet". There is no truth to rumors that it will be renamed AskAlden.
Some facts about About:

  Annual revenue: $40 million
  Median age of user: 37
  Gender: 65% women, presumably 35% men
  Average annual income: $61,000
  

    
> When you say "nuanced conversation" are you saying that it's an
> interactive blog?  Does he use a comments feature, or take email comments?

Well I had no idea, I was just regurgitating what I read (in quotes of
course). But after looking around, I think I found it at
 http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/    So far as I can tell from a quick viewing,
it's "nuanced" in the sense of being Mr. L's sometimes-irreverent comments
rather than polished PR.  He doesn't appear to take comments or e-mail
directly; there are little links to "Comments" and something called
"Trackback" at the bottom of the home page which is his latest comments, and
in them he seems (I think) to repeat and reply to posts directed at him in
other auto-industry blogs.  Kind of a strange way to hold a conversation,
but that's what it looks like.
  

    
THe Times bought about.com for $410 million, <ronks>.
  

    

   Gator Gets Gentler

The Claria Corporation, formerly known as Gator and also called many
colorful unprintable nicknames by victims of its spyware and popup ads, has
unveiled a new service.  Although the name BehaviorLink does not inspire
confidence, its creators say it is more benign than the existing system
known as Gain (as in "ill-gotten"). It will continue to "track the surfing
patterns of some 40 million Internet users" who contracted the infection
through Kazaa or some supposed freebie, but instead of for example deciding
that you are interested in a home mortgage and splashing a big ad for client
LowerMyBills.com when it sees you are about to visit rival WellsFargo.com,
it "will use this information to buy ads on publisher sites". No, I don't
know what that means, I'm just repeating it. Except it seems to signify no
popups of the kind that have provoked numerous lawsuits against Claria and
fellow nuisance WhenU.com.  We'll see. In any case Claria is not actually
getting out of the annoying popup trade, just trying to distract attention
by pointing out the window; the Gain system still provides over 90 percent
of Claria's revenue, or more than $100 M a year.
  

    
Oh I almost forgot; from PC Magazine columnist Larry Seltzer writing on the
immense amount of time and money wasted on the Year 2000 crisis that wasn't,
and how people rationalized the effort after it turned out to have been
unnecessary by claiming it "heightened awareness" and so forth, comes the

   Quote Of The Day

"It was clear that the emperor had no clothes, so the only thing left was to
praise nudity."
  

    

   Sit Erect And Read This Ad

A service called IntelliTXT marketed by Vibrant Media causes ads to pop up
on a Web page when the user's mouse pointer passes over highlighted words in
the body of an article.  Forbes.com tried it for a while, but it raised an
outcry among reporters and was dropped.  It returned yesterday in the NY
Post's Web site www.nypost.com with bizarre results. For example, a news
story about inflation included a report from a non-profit economics group
called the Conference Board; pointing your mouse at their name got you an ad
for teleconferencing services from GoToMeeting.  Journalism profs and others
wondered aloud if articles would now be written to incorporate revenue-
producing keywords; the vendor says that's impossible, since the system
scans the story and mechanically places the paid links when it finds a word
in its list, hence the conference blunder, but the suspicion lingers
especially among reporters who do not want to *mortgage* their reputation
for integrity over this new *wrinkle*. Anyway the NY Post management quickly
withdrew the feature, saying it was a test not meant to be made public.
About 400 publishers of online material presently subscribe to IntelliTXT,
according to Vibrator I mean Vibrant Media, including Popular Mechanics,
Experts Exchange, and gaming site IGN.com.
  

    

I've seen their pitch, but not seen them in action on an American site.  

Evidently they are accepted at UK Motely Fool, for example, making the 
UK version not need to charge a member fee for forums.  I thought that in 
a forum environment people would go nuts trying to fool the system...
but their reps said that the novelty wares off, and people mouse over 
to see where the link goes only when they think it could be relevent.

Did you have a chance to look at any of their sites?
  

    
> Did you have a chance to look at any of their sites?

I took a quick look at Popular Mechanics and saw links to car companies in
text articles, but nothing much out of the ordinary.  Firefox may have
blocked the pop-ups.
  

    

   Bank 'n Surf

Not quite, but a new generation of ATMs is going in. And for Wells Fargo a
new one is going in right on top of the old generation that finished getting
installed just last week. On the heels of replacing its 6200 units with
touch-screen models that also sell stamps (gosh gee golly), WF has begun
rollout in northern California of ATMs that instantly scan deposited checks
(you don't use an envelope any more) and display the image on the screen and
on the receipt.  They can also accept a stack of deposited currency "in any
order or condition", count it on the spot, and credit it instantly to the
account as good funds.


   Bag 'n Lose

A new generation of RFID-based airline baggage handling systems is basically
not going in, despite the potential to save $650 million annually. A lost
bag costs airlines about $150 in extra service and claims.  Today's bar code
readers are 80-85% accurate, while RFID tagging is right about 95% of the
time, and reducing the errors by a factor of 3 or 4 could mean big savings.
If only the bankrupt and money-losing carriers could afford to install them
and had any idea how quickly they would recoup the expense. Leading the pack
is Delta "which in recent years has tumbled toward the bottom of the annual
rankings of how effectively airlines handle luggage" and hopes to climb out
of the pit, but other lines are dragging their feet. Or wheels, or ailerons,
or whatever.  And other problems abound besides their inability to pay:
back-end tracking systems have turned out to be more complex than expected
(surprise!), and the metal bins that hold cargo for loading onto the planes
interfere with signals.  The tags' very success has become a problem:
they're also used for aircraft parts and airport service vehicles, and
makers of all sorts of stuff sort at Wal-Mart (including luggage) are
putting tags on their products, which the consumer may fail to remove before
flying off.  All these tags result in a kind of info overload that has to be
sorted out and separated from the chaff, or wheat, or well you know.  Add to
that mix a traditional Europe-US standards spat; the US carriers want cheap
~25-cent tags that just identify the bag with the other data (destination,
owner, etc.) stored centrally, while European airlines want tags that hold
all that coded onto the ID so "the data travels with the luggage".
  

    

   "White-Collar Sweatshop"

Though no doubt sartorially inaccurate, that description of Electronic Arts
as a place to work has been getting attention.  While its HR head says it
"tears at the employment model that Silicon Valley was built on" and could
move employees "out of a culture that emphasizes entrepreneurialism and
ownership and into a clock-watching mentality", the company has agreed to
begin paying some workers for overtime, though they will no longer be
eligible for bonuses and stock options.  The origin of the issue seems to be
in the consolidation of game-software businesses from small shops where
staff saw themselves as artists of a sort, into big businesses: some games
cost up to $20 million to develop today and EA now employs over 5800 people.
Over half of whom are outside the USA, and a VP made a veiled threat to take
all its work overseas if the peons of Redwood City get any more uppity.
Although a lawsuit claiming overtime has been pending since last summer, the
current buzz began when the anonymous wife of an anonymous EA staffer posted
on the Internet that her husband worked up to 80 hours a week with no days
off during the period just prior to release of a game, and at standard OT
rates would augment his salary by a third if he were paid for it.


   Not So Fast

Looking into Bush administration claims that rapid computerization of
medical records can produce enormous payoffs in cheaper better patient care,
the Journal of the American Medical Association finds holes in the argument.
One research paper "found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians
could increase the risk of medication errors". It said much existing
software was "poorly designed" and "too often ignored how doctors and
nurses actually work"; it found that patient data was often scattered among
disparate applications, and that looking up one patient's pills could mean
searching "up to 20 screens of information".  Also that the computer systems
crashed when they were needed.  Another article investigated 100 trials of
medical computer systems, and determined that the "glowing assessments" of
the systems "came from technologists who had a hand in designing the
systems"; and very possibly a stake in profits from the outcome.  Even the
chief administration cheerleader for medical IT said the articles were a
"useful wake-up call"; and the head of medical IT at Kaiser Permanente noted
that while accurate the articles focused more on older systems which were
being replaced by ones developed with better user collaboration.
  

    

   Pop!

Five years ago on March 10 of 2000, the NASDAQ stock index reached 5132.52,
its all-time high.  Yesterday it closed at 2061.29, about 60 percent off.
Inefficiencies in the market for short-selling stocks impaired its ability
to keep stock prices down to reasonable valuations during the bubble,
according to a recent National Bureau of Economics Research article at
http://www.nber.org/reporter/winter05/lamont.html