FT review of interesting book on attempts to clone Silicon Valley.

Excerpt. “Another point stressed in the Stanford papers – and this is particularly relevant to Cambridge – is that clusters are more likely to flourish if they contain some large companies. An increase in the number of companies is not enough; some of them need to transform themselves into global operators that can act as role models, as trainers of technical and managerial staff and as a source of spin-offs.

This is the missing ingredient in Britain’s Silicon Fen. Despite the undoubted achievements of ARM Holdings and a few software businesses, there is no Cambridge company in the same league as Nokia or some of the larger Taiwanese firms. Is this because British entrepreneurs shy away from the challenge of managing big, inter-national companies, or are conditions for building such companies less favourable in the UK than in Finland or Taiwan?”

According to a report in New Scientist, sleep scientists at Oxford have discovered an alarming fact – counting sheep does not help you drop off after all. But there is consolation for insomniacs, as they also found that conjuring up a pleasant and relaxing scene will have you nodding off in no time.

Those finding hard to sleep often seek distraction and some distractions work better than others, a team at Oxford University has found. “Picturing an engaging scene takes up more brain space than the same dirty old sheep,” says Allison Harvey. “Plus it’s easier to stay with it because it’s more interesting,” she adds.

“A Mess in Theory — a Mess in Practice”. Thoughtful article by Simon Caulkin on the failure of management education in Britain. Very good on the baleful impact of the RAE.

“management research must pass a dual test of rigour: it must be theoretically robust but also stand up to the buffeting of practice. (As one business-school head used to say: ‘There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.’) It is also transdisciplinary. Important issues such as supply-chain management or indeed productivity do not sit comfortably in traditional subject areas.

RAE tramples on both these imperatives. It judges research in 69 standalone units of assessment, and in purely academic terms, by peer review of books and articles in learned journals. For RAE purposes, articles in Harvard Business Review, the most influential management publication on the planet, don’t count because it is not an academic journal. ”

Netscape Communications, AOL Time Warner’s subsidiary, on Tuesday sued Microsoft for damages, citing its anti-competitive behaviour during the so-called “browser wars” in the mid-1990s. The private antitrust lawsuit is based on the government’s antitrust case against the software giant, which found the company guilty of anti-competitive behaviour. FT story here.

Dave Winer: “For some writing I want to do I need a definition of the term Full Peer. What do you think, does this explanation make sense to you?”  Yes Dave, it does.

Violence and gang-warfare in Cybercafes. Whatever next?

What a difference a year makes. According to this morning’s Financial Times, the John Lewis Partnership is to close Buy.com, the internet business it bought last year, following strong Christmas trading on its own website. The retail group hopes most of Buy.com’s 200,000 customers will move to to Johnlewis.com, where it will set up a technology shop.

How the Wayback Machine works.

The Internet Archive made headlines back in November with the release of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, a Web interface to the Archive’s five-year, 100-terabyte collection of Web pages. The archive is the result of the efforts of its director, Brewster Kahle, to capture the ephemeral pages of the Web and store them in a publicly accessible library. In addition to the other millions of web pages you can find in the Wayback Machine, it has direct pointers to some of the pioneer sites from the early days of the Web, including the NCSA What’s New page, The Trojan Room Coffee Pot, and Feed magazine.

Malcolm Dean wrote a terrific obituary of Michael Young, the most remarkable social reformer of the late 20th century.

There was a nice profile of Susan Sontag in last Saturday’s Guardian, which quotes a magnificent sneering attack on her by Scott McLemee in his Washington Post review of her latest book.

“Her manner now is virtually indistinguishable from that of George Steiner in his lugubrious moments as Last Intellectual, striking that solemn pose as embodiment of high seriousness – perched atop the Nintendo ruins of western civilization”.