mobrec

So
Apparently the US and Britain are taking some flack for staging a huge arms exhibition in London and using the Iraq war as a sales point:

The spokesman said the invasion and occupation of Iraq had been “good news” for the major arms companies.

“It has allowed them to label their arms as battle-tested and provided them with promotional material for their missiles, bombs, fighter aircraft, artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles.

“They will be marketing their weapons to countries with the full support of the UK Government and the perverse promotional assistance provided by Iraq.”

I suppose there is nothing to keep this sort of thing from happening, but it does have that sort of perverse quality to it as if Louisville Slugger said 'look at how well our baseball bats cracked skulls at the last riot'.

Not surprisingly, these same activities went on during previous hostilities in the Middle East.

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Sadly, while in the top ten, the US should have a better showing when it comes to the success of its education system. A world-wide study places South Korea (#1), the Slovak Republic (#3), the Czech Republic (#5) ahead of the US (#9).

Remember this the next time you think about how your US tax dollars get spent.

So
A new book by John Battelle titled The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture should provide an interesting read and some insight into this ever growing company. The review on Wired.com sounds promising so I'll probably add it to my wishlist.

The last book like this I read was supposed to have been on the startup of Netscape, called Competing on Internet Time. However, I found this book to be a real dissapointment as the dubious premise the author took was that everything that Netscape did was in reaction to Microsoft. I can't count the number of times the author kept using the tired phrase '...locked in a life and death struggle with Microsoft'. The fact is, at the time Microsoft had no clue about the Internet and where happily flogging away on the virtues of video on demand over cable (remember the blinding success that turned out to be).

Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure was a fascinating look at how real innovation (in this case in the early days of pen based computing) can be choked to death by 'partnering' with Microsoft.

I still think that my favorite book on technology companies was Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. This is a book that I picked up an read many years ago and continue to re-read it now and again.

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I was interested to learn that enhancements to Wiki are being formulated to allow for the inclusion of semantic annotation of articles.

Wiki has proven itself to be an effective means of collecting information (look no further than the wikipedia). Coupling something like wikipedia with a means of being able to make machine readable sense of the collected knowledge is a pretty potent combination.

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Not surprisingly, Massachusetts has long-standing concerns over Microsoft's XML schema based document formats and is seeking an open format to preserve current and future documents from patent and other encumbrances by Microsoft. This is actually part of a larger effort to minimize the states dependence on proprietary technologies.

Perhaps one of the most ridiculous parts of this situation is Microsoft's refusal to support the Open Document format. They already have over twenty different import and export filters in Word. The OD format is similar enough to their not-quite-XML format for it not to be a huge effort for them to create a filter to support OD.

It is pretty easy to see that MS is trying to use it's market dominance to encumber others intellectual property via their closed, proprietary (and not terribly efficient) document formats.

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This article which appeared in National Geographic in October of 2004 raises some interesting questions for the 'we couldn't have known this was going to happen' apologists that I pointed out in a previous posting. This quote from the article was particularly striking:

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City.”

I am glad that Colin Powell is out of office and can speak his mind about Katrina and it's aftermath as well.

This is a pretty amazing slide show of the before, during and after of a photographer who was in New Orleans the entire time of the storm.

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Interesting article in Wired regarding differences in how Asians and Westerners perceive information that is presented to them.

I recall seeing a book in the past called The Geography of Thought which dealt with related differences in perception, as well as belief systems and work practices. While I have not read this book, it is definitely on 'the list' as I find this subject fascinating.

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After a week of listening to the coverage of Katrina (and the aftermath) there are some things that I just need to get off my chest:

As bad as it is, stop calling it 'our tsunami'. There is a big difference between something that happen with little or no warning and something that happened with several days warning that some people either didn't react to or couldn't react to. Why does there have to be competition over whose natural disaster was worse? They are all horrible and provide an opportunity to see the best (and worst) in people.

In New Orleans, the situation rapidly turned into a Y2K-esque worst case scenario: no power, no water, no communications, armed mobs looting and pillaging with the government unable to respond. Except in this real life scenario, this was not the result of some errant computer software. This was a fatal combination of natural disaster and the worst side of humankind.

Before Katrina hit, it seems that there were those who couldn't move because they didn't have cars or some other means of getting around or out of the city because they are poor. This might have something to do with the fact that the poverty rate in the US has grown to 12.5% under the current administration. Apparently the poor are good enough to fight wars, but not worth rescuing or looking out for properly — sickening.

Another point that I am struggling with regarding the slow federal response is 'because it is a very complicated situation that no one could have foreseen'. Then how do we account for the Hurricane Pam simulations that showed almost exactly what was going to happen? You might ask yourself how can the international press get camera crews, helicopters, ground transport, etc to freely go in to areas to broadcast (some might say, exploit) those impacted by this disaster, but the government doesn't seem to be as resourceful. Nor does it seem that the press has enough integrity to try to bring in whatever aid they can while covering the events.

The National Guard, who typically play a crucial role in providing swift and effective assistance during natural disasters are hobbled by the fact that 40% of Mississippi's and 35% of Louisiana's National Guard are in Iraq.

This event seems to me to be an example of the current administrations domestic policy writ large: if you have money, you're ok, you can evacuate (you can basically do whatever you want); if you don't, then they really don't give a damn about what happens to you. So you have a situation were the administration cut funding for levee enhancements/maintenance because of 'the war', but then turned around and provided a 31 billion USD handout to oil companies that are already making multi-billion dollar profits quarterly. Then you have gun toating idiots wrecking havoc, because we need more guns in this country, right NRA? I can already hear their twisted response, 'well, if everyone had a gun, they could defend themselves against the bandits' Right, we all know that the solution to cleaning up an oil slick is to pour more oil on it...

Thankfully, the situation seems to be improving. I just hope that this country learns a lesson from this disaster and is able to grow in a more positive direction.

One final note: it seems ironic to me that the Administration has been on TV and radio telling those who have Labor Day plans (which in the US is 'a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.') to stay home, and not have any inessential travel.

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WoooHooo. I finally broke the 1000 views 'milestone' on my Flickr account in only three months. Kind of surprising because I don't consider myself a great photographer, but I aim to improve :) .

Thanks to everyone on Flickr for their kind words and suggestions.

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Isn't it so amazing that three weeks ago, AAA predicted that gas would be over three dollars a gallon by the end of the month. And, surprise! on August 31st my local is selling gas for $3.09 a gallon.

Oh, joy.