Daily Archives: September 6, 2006

Dubya the hedgehog

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Interesting Whiskey Bar meditation on George Bush (aka Shrub in this context)…

When [Isaiah] Berlin divided writers and thinkers (which leaves Shrub out) and human beings in general (I suppose we have to include him) into two categories — the hedgehogs and the foxes — he didn’t mean for either label to be taken pejoratively. After all, his list of hedgehogs included Dante, Plato, Dostoevsky and Proust, while Shakespeare, Aristotle and Erasmus were among his foxes.

What Berlin meant, I think, is that hedgehogs try to integrate all of their experiences and thoughts into a single, overarching concept of life and their place in it, while foxes, as he put it, have ideas about the world “without . . . seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision.”

At this point, I would say Shrub is acting like a hedgehog on hallucinogens. His one big integrative idea — exporting American-style “democracy” to Iraq at the point of a gun — has proven fatally, disasterously wrong, but he can’t let go of it, because it’s the only idea he’s got. He’s fully vested in it, like a ’90s e-trader who decided to throw caution to the wind, empty his retirement account and bet it all on pets.com.

I think if Shrub were ever forced to let go of his vision, his one big idea, it would not only crush his fragile ego, it would leave him completely incapable of making any sense at all out of his presidency, out of America’s role in the Middle East, out of the universe.

So now he’s imitating the hedgehog as literally as any human being can — he’s rolled himself up into a defensive ball, spines out. He has nothing useful to say and absolutely no strategy beyond hunkering down and passively defying reality. Which leaves the generals and the troops no choice but to hunker down with him.

The next two and a half years are going to be very long ones…

Gartner: Microsoft must turn to virtualization technology

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From an interesting InformationWeek piece

Microsoft’s mistakes in Vista’s development have been well-chronicled, and the company’s leaders recognize that another five-year gap between major updates of their money maker could be disastrous. In July, chief executive Steve Ballmer told financial analysts “we will never repeat our experience with Windows Vista, we will never have a five-year gap between major releases of flagship products.”

But exactly how will Microsoft do this? How can it handle the increasingly unwieldy amount of code in Windows, better secure the operating system, and maintain backward compatibility with the legions of legacy applications? Gartner’s Gammage and two colleagues, Michael Silver and David Mitchell Smith, believe they know.

“Microsoft will have to move toward virtualization at its core to change direction,” said Gammage. “We think this is what will happen. Microsoft, at the moment, disagrees with us.

“But we don’t see another way of doing this.”

In the scheme that Gammage sees playing out, Microsoft will be forced into adding a “hypervisor,” a layer of virtualization software that runs between the operating system and hardware, to Vista by no later than 2009. Virtualization-enabled processors and chipsets, such as the newer offerings from both Intel and AMD, allow hypervisors to run, which in turn let developers separate functions of an OS into chunks, then have those pieces run simultaneously in multiple virtual machine partitions.

“We expect this hypervisor to provide the key enabling technology for reversing the trend in functional integration,” wrote Gammage, Silver, and Smith in a research report they issued nearly two weeks ago.

“This is how Microsoft will be able to deal with 25 years of backward compatibility,” Gammage said. Virtualization, he said will allow a future Windows to run the legacy kernel — to support aged applications — alongside a new kernel, just as current virtual machine technologies let users run different operating systems side-by-side…

Anyone wondering why Xensource is going to be such a Big Deal need look no further. They’ve cracked the hypervisor problem. And the delicious irony is that their core technology is open source!

The Valley gets free Wi-Fi

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From today’s New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 5 — A consortium of technology companies, including I.B.M. and Cisco Systems, announced plans Tuesday for a vast wireless network that would provide free Internet access to big portions of Silicon Valley and the surrounding region as early as next year.

The project is the largest of a new breed of wireless networks being built across the country. They are taking advantage of the falling cost of providing high-speed Internet access over radio waves as opposed to cable or telephone lines. The project will cover 1,500 square miles in 38 cities in San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Santa Cruz Counties, an area of 2.4 million residents. Its builders, going by the name Silicon Valley Metro Connect, said the service would provide free basic wireless access at speeds up to 1 megabit a second — which is roughly comparable to broadband speeds by telephone — in outdoor areas. Special equipment, costing $80 to $120, will be needed to bolster the signal enough to bring it inside homes or offices.

The consortium will also offer a fee-based service, with higher speeds and technical support, and will allow other companies to sell premium services over the network as well.Diana Hage, director of wireless services at I.B.M., said she expected the project to cost $75 million to $270 million. She said the project was meant to be a public service and, by showing the potential for the technology, to develop and promote the companies’ commercial interests.

I.B.M. is providing project management, and Cisco is providing equipment. They are joined in the project by Azulstar Networks, which plans to handle network operations, and SeaKay, a nonprofit group that focuses on providing Internet access to low-income areas.

Realism dawning in the US?

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Or perhaps a new isolationism? Interesting Pew Research Center report

Five years later, Americans’ views of the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have changed little, but opinions about how best to protect against future attacks have shifted substantially. In particular, far more Americans say reducing America’s overseas military presence, rather than expanding it, will have a greater effect in reducing the threat of terrorism.

By a 45% to 32% margin, more Americans believe that the best way to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on the U.S. is to decrease, not increase, America’s military presence overseas. This is a stark reversal from the public’s position on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. In the summer of 2002, before serious public discussion of removing Saddam Hussein from power had begun, nearly half (48%) said that the best way to reduce terrorism was to increase our military involvement overseas, while just 29% said less involvement would make us safer.

Similarly, in 2002 a 58% majority felt that military strikes against nations developing nuclear weapons were a very important way to reduce future terrorism. Today, just 43% express the same level of support for such action…

Overheard 2

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From Overheard in New York | The Voice of the City…

Sassy flight attendant: In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will be released from the overhead above your seat. After the screaming subsides, please place the oxygen mask around your nose and mouth. If you are traveling with a child or an adult who is acting like a child, place your mask on first before attempting to help put theirs on. –Flight out of LaGuardia

Overheard

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From an email reporting an exchange overheard in New York:

Old lady, to woman speaking on Bluetooth headset: “Excuse me, but are you talking to yourself?”

Woman just looks at her and keeps talking.

Old lady: “Because, if you are, you should be nicer to yourself.”

Reminds me of the time a colleague of mine was walking down a long, deserted corridor in Denver airport at night. Coming towards him was a very large black guy who spoke thus: “First I’m gonna whip your ass, then I’m gonna kill ya”.

Just as my friend was composing himself for sudden death he noticed the hands-free wire dangling from the chap’s left ear.

Bugs not features at HP

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Amazing goings-on at Hewlett Packard, once one of the best and the nicest companies in the world. Here’s the report from Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Hewlett-Packard, long known for its open and egalitarian corporate structure, is making headlines today for an astonishing lapse in judgement that may forever tarnish the the core values established by its founders some 50 years ago. According to reports, HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn ordered the surveillance of HP board members in an effort to out a director who was leaking information to the news media. On her sayso, a team of security consultants gathered board members’ private telephone records and used them to finger longtime HP director George Keyworth as the source of the leaks. Dunn outed Keyworth and demanded his resignation at a May 18 meeting which quickly went bad when she revealed her surveillance scheme. (Keyworth will not be renominated to the company’s board.)

Enraged at Dunn’s methods, well-known venture capitalist Tom Perkins abruptly quit the board and stormed out of the meeting. HP announced his resignation the next day, but without explanation. Since then, Perkins has been after HP to make a full and accurate report of the circumstances surrounding his departure. HP refused, so Perkins forced its hand, going public in an irate letter to company directors attached to which was a memo from AT&T’s general attorney confirming an unauthorized review of his phone records. “As the Company failed to make a full and accurate report (as required by federal law) and having given the Company several opportunities to correct the record, I am now legally obliged to disclose publicly the reasons for my resignation,” Perkins wrote. “This is a very sad duty. My history with the Hewlett-Packard Company is long and I have been privileged to count both founders as close friends. I consider HP to be an icon of Silicon Valley, and one of the great companies of the world. It now needs, urgently, to correct its course.”

Dunn ought to be fired. Pronto.

Ironic footnote: “First and foremost is that privacy is actually a core value at HP. As a company, HP is 100 percent committed to excellence in consumer and employee privacy…”

— Scott Taylor, Chief Privacy Officer, Hewlett-Packard, June 20, 2006