Count on the Bo tale to take another twist – a small melodrama of days gone by but very telling. It has tinges of Mao Red and is told by a Chinese expatriate. Check it out for a keen insight into the veritable telo-roman that is Bo Xilai and company. After taking, Bo is now […]
Bo Takes and Gives Read More »
Bo Xilai is the displaced Chinese Communist leader who keeps giving. And in an indirect way he may be opening up China in ways that will be hard for the Communist Party to completely shutdown as 500 million bloggers and the Chinese equivalents of Twitter and Facebook plus the thousands of microsblogs continue to make
Update: May16th, 2012 Tom Friedman of the NYTimes is climbing on board and calling it a Revolution. See here. US Universities may have just crossed a tipping point – or should I say 4 tipping points. First David Brooks at NYTimes has written a Martin Luther-like manifesto calling into question the efficacy of college/university teaching
University Tipping Point Read More »
Return of the Left in China. The story of Bo Xilai has an eerie mirror to US politics. The populist Chinese leader from the western and more impoverished province of Chongqing had ruled with tough sometimes brutal policing. But he had also catered to the Left movement in China that would see reforms on housing, food supply
Bo Xilai: A Mirror on US Politics Read More »
If you have been in the airline, media or electronics business in the past 10 years you have experienced Business Disruption’s accelerated pace. Check the Business RIP notices at Wikipedia. But the following articles in Forbes about the impending and ongoing demise of Sony, Best Buy and Eastman Kodak in the face of the best
Business Disruptions and Management Read More »
One can tell the gold rush is on again on the Web to establish the next social media Instagram. What is different from 12 years ago at the apex of the Dot.com bust is the emergence of 3 things: 1)enormous computing IT capacity in 3 areas – chips + memory = cheap but huge computing power,
Back in 2008 Picnik was cited as one of the best online image editing sites in the business. Two years later in 2010 there was another review no less enthusiastic about Picnik after Google bought the software and added it to Picasa. Other recent reviews put Picnik well above such competition as SplashUp and even
Why did Google Close Picnik? Read More »
This morning I had a strange encounter with two women from the WatchTower organization. They came to the door holding the Bible and asking me if I believed in the Bible while quoting from Scriptures. Now to put this situation in context, I am rushing to finish some computing work for a later meeting about
Free online university courses have really hit their stride this quarter. Courses from Michigan, MIT, Stanford, University of California at Berkley are available now. Free course material has been available from a variety of sources. Near and dear to this blog and web developer are the w3schools set of tutorials on all key coding in web development
Two Superb, Free Online University Courses Read More »
There are three troubling events that are occurring and raise concerns about the ability of Body Commons that is the USA to “heal thyself”. The first is the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. A white shot a black youth in very questionable circumstances. It is the aftermath that is the concern. TheDailyBeast has been following
3 Troubling Events Read More »
Steve Jobs as manager is being featured in an article by Jobs biographer, Walter Isaacson, in the the Harvard Business Review. Clearly, the piece by Isaacson is an apologia. Even the NYTimes has picked up the story because there are a wide range of attitudes towards Jobs management style. As a onetime Mac User I
Steve Jobs as Manager Read More »
The following letter of resignation by Greg Smith from Goldman Sachs published at the NYTimes appears to provide proof that the Finance Vulture Culture has survived despite the onslaught of Bush and Obama administration legal prosecution cases against the financiers responsible for the Mortgage Meltdown and Financial Crisis. Now to be sure this Survival of the Fittest extends beyond
The Culture of Finance Read More »
Ross Douthat at the NYTimes has written a spirited rebuttal of the notion that the Republican Primary Process has helped to scuttle the Party’s Presidential prospects. He insists that … well lets let Ross speak for himself: Let’s stipulate that this has not been the most edifying of primary seasons. The policy debates have often
The Wheels Are NOT Coming Off The Republican Party I Read More »
While the Takethe5th has been doing this series of articles on The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party , Paul Krugman at the NYTimes has been tearing the hide off the Big Elephant . Here is a Krugman sampler of three of the most recent editorials: 1 – Moochers Against Welfare There is a strange
The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party IV Read More »
In case you had not noticed, The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party. You know that is the case when George Will on ABC TV’s This Week with George Stephanopoulis [again] starts taking historical potshots at the Republican chances of defeating President Obama ‘when it should be a cakewalk”. But more seriously, the Republican
The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party III Read More »
We said it here first but now David Brooks at the NYTimes is confirming what has become ever more obvious – the wheels are coming off the Republican Party. And this is not just the fact that all of the GOP Presidential candidates trail President Obama in the polls. David attributes the phenomenon to the
The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party II Read More »
Apple is reserving the right to sue Kodak into oblivion is the headline at AllThings Digital. Once Steve Jobs opened the patent lawsuit “magic box” in Cupertino, Tim Cook seems not able or even remotely inclined to close the lid on the lawyers. This legal maneuvering will have real implications for the rate of innovation at
Apple’s Brand of Do No Evil Read More »
The US has the problem that in a 2 party system the US is only running with 1. This NYTimes article by Paul Krugman catches the essence of the argument made increasingly in this blog here and here: Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be —
In A Two Party System – Running With Only One Read More »
If the Republicans want a bona fide issue to tar and feather President Obama on, its his kowtowing to the banks exemplified most recently by the Housing Settlement. Once again, “for the sake of the economy”, banks get away with major white collar financial crime. Anything for a settlement. The $25Billion is peanuts in comparison to the the
The Housing “Settlement” Stinks Badly Read More »
The NYTimes story last week on the iEconomy in China has raised again the issue of working conditions and notably practices in China. By Apple executives own admission this is a sensitive issue which could spoil the Apple Brand. Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms.
Vendor Operating System Rate Microsoft Windows XP 86.38% Windows 7 10.78% Windows Vista 1.62% Windows 2003 0.43% Windows 2000 0.09% Other 0.01% Apple Mac OS 0.52% Linux Linux 0.17% Source: Baidu.com With the upcoming Windows 8, Microsoft should see a huge increase in revenues from China. Consider that aging and no longer supported Windows XP
Microsoft and China Read More »
Our article, The Wheels Are Coming Off the GOP Base, has had some very interesting confirmation in the Press in the past few days. The NYTimes in an editorial says “Don’t stop the debates. The purpose of debates is to get candidates and their ideas before voters. In the Republicans’ case, that includes exposing the failed
GOP Wheels Coming Off; Bad For USA Too Read More »
Politics, particularly Presidential politics is risky racing like Formula 1. Everything is taken to the limit and like Formula 1 every performance [debate, campaign event, TV attack ad, Web presence to Tweet, and election result]is polled, monitored, and analyzed in almost excuciating detail. And there is a surplus of political operatives suggesting how to drive the agenda,
The Wheels Are Coming Off The GOP Base Read More »
Mitt Romney now appears to be the leader to beat in the polls for the next 3 primary votes – New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. In the Saturday ABC Debate debates the consensus is that Romney escaped unscathed as none of his rivals attacked him even with comparison statements. The result is that the
Mitt Romney:”I Know Business” Read More »
The Republican Presidential campaign has been a dramatic example of Just in Time Journalism. Each time a new candidate has reached the top of the Media Hype Heap a simple fact-checking pin prick does in the new Pseudo Presidential front-runner. And there have been 7 pretenders – Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Rick Perry, Hermann Cane,
Just in Time Journalism: the GOP News Read More »
John Stewart’s the Daily Show along with the Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher are crossing the News-Infotainment Divide in the opposite direction – going from infotainment and humor to educating their audiences on some rather subtle aspects of current political events[also note the balance here, Democrats get their fair share of criticism
Jon Stewart’s the Daily Show: Humor Crossing Back Into Education/Informing Read More »
The five major problems facing not just the US but almost all developed countries are the following: 1)Jobs are going to the developing countries with very favorable rates of exchange and wage level relative to prosperous developed countries. Wages in China, India, Vietnam, Brazil and others across the board are a fraction of the developed
5 Major Wicked Problems and US Election Politics Read More »
Update:Penn-Olsen, a Chinese Tech watching website is reporting that Chinese Hackers say release of massive amounts of data was just a joke. The data released on the internet last week was already widely available in hacking circles, according to Wan Tao, the founder of a popular hacking online community. Wan told the Dongfang Daily that
China’s Massive Internet Security Turmoil:Updated Read More »
A computer operating system is very close to a natural monopoly. Controlling the dysfunctional effects of such monpolies has proven very difficult. A simple monopoly occurs when one supplier provides 60% or more of the product in a marketplace. Monopolies do not have to be dysfunctional. However, in profit maximizing markets there is a strong
Operating Systems as Natural Monopolies: Think Apple iOS Read More »
Adobe management has a major problem – the operating platform where 50% of its sales come from, Apple, has had top executives sabotaging Adobe’s products and market position. Worse, this abusive behavior has been going on for decades. True, the idea of development neutrality of Operating System vendors is at best only ethically binding [which
Adobe’s Apple Conundrum Read More »
Henry McCracken at Time magazine has shown how to do computer technology predictions – although McCracken adamantly denies they are predictions. But actually they are deliciously witty, cleverly written yet clasically correct statistical forecasts. For under the guise of writing a)what we can assume will happen – the median value, b)what I hope will happen
How To Do Timely Technology Predictions Read More »
In the last two years, more article are appearing from Wall Streeters who are questioning the budding financial myths on what caused the Financial Meltdown of 2007-2008. Here is a telling one by a Wall Street analyst, Barry Ritholtz that appeared in the Washington Post and has been picked up by a number of Share websites like
The Big Lie : Viral Misinformation Read More »
