Gary Secondino's Weblog
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Gary Secondino's Weblog



Thursday, October 31, 2002 
categories: Culture

A picture named WakefieldRally.jpg

This one is from a demonstration that took place in Wakefield, MA. Formerly a nice quiet New England town.
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categories: Culture

Are you cinematically literate? Salon's A&E editor picks the best and most influential movies of all time.
Salon.com
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categories: SciTech, Biz

ZDNet - Cambridge Display Technology and Opsys are combining their display efforts to further push the development of next-generation displays.
Roll-Up Monitors A Step Closer To Reality Slashdot
Cambridge Display buys Oxford OLED spin-off Opsys EETimes
Houston Chronicle - Electronic News - BusinessWeek - CNN Asia - and 12 related »
Google Technology News
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categories: Financial, Legal

Boston Globe - The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed that US firms be required to disclose an estimated $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt, a reaction to Enron Corp.'s collapse.
Stiffer disclosure rules win tentative approval Seattle Times
SEC looks into Lucent's accounting USA Today
Washington Post - Houston Chronicle - San Jose Mercury News - Financial Times (subscription) - and 68 related »
Google Business News
THREE TRILLION IN UNACCOUNTED CORPORATE DEBT? Has the SEC been ASLEEP? Sell your stocks in these companies. Boycott their products, drive them out of business, put those responsible in jail. TOTALY UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR.

  10:43:59 AM  Google It!  comment

categories: Culture

You be the judge. I just like the way this sentence sounds. In my mind it makes a picture of Elmer Fudd in a Canadian Mountie uniform singing to his girl friend "I Love Owny Woo, woo, woo, woo.


Memepool
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categories: Biz

The mega portal continues to dance with open-source software with its decision to switch from proprietary languages to PHP for its backend scripting.
internetnews.com: Top News
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categories: Biz

IBM's chief executive outlines his vision of technology's future built on open standards, self-healing computing systems, and making IT investments pay.
internetnews.com: Top News
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categories: SciTech, Biz

The Wireless Fidelity Alliance is pushing a new security standard intended to help reassure business customers that the technology is safe.
CNET News.com
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Tuesday, October 29, 2002 
categories: World

BBC - The US embassy in Moscow says it has identified the gas used by Russian security forces as they stormed the theatre on Saturday where 800 hostages were held by armed Chechens.
Putin asserts authority as Russia mourns Guardian
Russia prepares to bury siege dead CNN
The Globe and Mail - New York Times - Austin American Statesman - Financial Times (subscription) - and 1236 related »
Google World News
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categories: World

ABC News - MOSCOW The actors were just ending a tap dance when an armed, camouflaged man rushed the stage in the Moscow theater. "I thought it was a joke, though a strange joke," says one actor. But with a volley of gunfire, a night out at a popular ...
The Boy on a Date and Other Sad Stories New York Times
'People are dead but without the special forces, all would be dead' The Scotsman
San Francisco Chronicle - Financial Times (subscription) - Canada.com - Hartford Courant - and 178 related »
Google World News
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categories: Biz

A draft constitution for an enlarged European Union was unveiled on Monday, pointing the way toward creating a greater European presence on the world stage. By Paul Meller.
New York Times: Business
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categories: Financial, Biz, Politics

Palm Beach Post - Well, that was a short era of business reform. The way the White House and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt chopped up the accounting oversight board means that investors have lost out.
SEC vote creates partisan rift BBC
Board stupid Guardian
New York Times - Washington Post - CFO.com Magazine - Business Times - and 42 related »
Google Business News
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Monday, October 28, 2002 
categories: Sportz

A picture named bradySad.jpg
 
The sports lovers are talking quietly after yesterday's 24 to 16 Patriot loss to the Broncos. This puts the team at 3-4 and it's clear to everyone this ain't last years team. Last year the team was the blue collar underdogs with something to prove to the world. This year watching the Patriots I'm reminded of bored factory workers displaying false enthusasium during a company meeting. The New England fans root for the Patriots success, but I'm afraid they will soon also berate the players for failure. So it goes on the downside following a winning season. Sad...

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categories: Financial, Politics

Brad DeLong takes on the NY Times and Senator Charles Grassley for a letter to the editor from (supposedly) Grassley published by the Times which supports dubya's tax cut fantasy. The comments by Brad are priceless and I imagine accurate too.
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categories: Biz

The Clariion CX200, a modestly priced network storage system for businesses, is the first product to emerge from the companies' partnership that is manufactured by Dell.
CNET News.com
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categories: Biz

The company's printing division accounts for all HP's profits. But the well's not bottomless, and HP is looking to steal away users of the printing press--as well as tap other areas.
CNET News.com
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Sunday, October 27, 2002 

"...even if they haven't bought a lot of Macs: Macintosh is now on their radar."
The Motley Fool
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categories: Biz

The latest trick of bulk e-mail marketers is to hit the referral logs of popular weblogs, and the bloggers are hopping mad. By Michelle Delio.
Wired News
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Thursday, October 24, 2002 
categories: Medical/Health

San Francisco Chronicle - In a finding likely to change how heart surgeries are conducted throughout the world, researchers have discovered that aspirin, given hours after coronary bypass surgery, can cut post-operative deaths by two-thirds and sharply reduce a variety ...
Aspirin cuts deaths after heart attack Boston Globe
Aspirin saves lives after heart surgery MSNBC
Miami Herald - New York Times - Billings Gazette - Charlotte Observer - and 52 related »
Google US News
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categories: Financial, Biz

AOL Time Warner said that it had turned up several additional improper transactions at its AOL division, broadening the extent of its acknowledged accounting problems. By David D. Kirkpatrick.
New York Times: Business
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categories: Financial, Biz

Standard & Poor's will release its calculations of "core earnings," as it defines them. That definition will make most companies look far worse than they have appeared. By Floyd Norris.
New York Times: Business
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A specialist in corporate ethics urged that companies involved in helping the nation's hospitals buy supplies adopt sweeping policy changes to avoid conflicts of interest. By Barry Meier.
New York Times: Business
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categories: Legal

Two men wanted for questioning in the Sniper case were arrested in Maryland this morning.

Around 1 AM an unidentified motorist passing through a rest stop in Maryland spotted the vehicle which matched the description broadcast earlier by police. A state trooper verified the licence tag and determined two men were in the vehicle asleep. At 3:30 AM the two men were arrested by the combined task force. A search warrent for the vehicle is being sought at this time.
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Wednesday, October 23, 2002 
categories: Financial, SciTech, Biz

Toronto Star - Struggling Lucent Technologies reported a quarterly net loss of $2.81 billion as the telecommunications gear maker continued to slash its workforce and expenses to offset sharply lower revenues as a severe industry decline drags on.
Lucent Posts 10th Consecutive Loss Reuters
Lucent losing streak hits 10 ZDNet
Quicken - IT World - Financial Times (subscription) - TheStreet.com - and 54 related »
Google Business News
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categories: Financial, Biz, Politics

The U.S. struggled with a "sluggish" economy over the past two months, with weak retail sales and a lackluster job market, the Federal Reserve reported today. By The Associated Press.
New York Times: Business
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categories: Politics

ABC News - Candidates for governor are shattering spending records in more than a half-dozen states, and coming close elsewhere, in one of the most competitive election years for the states' top office over the past decade.
Spending records falling in governors races, driven by competitive races and wealthy candidates San Francisco Chronicle
Spending records broken in races CNN
Houston Chronicle - San Antonio Express News - San Angelo Standard Times - Guardian - and 28 related »
Google US News
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categories: Legal, Biz

ABC News - SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23 The California Supreme Court on Wednesday let stand a $290 million verdict against the Ford Motor Co. over a deadly 1993 rollover accident involving a Ford Bronco.
California Court Upholds $290 Million Injury Jury Award Against Ford Quicken
Court Upholds Verdict Against Ford Reuters
Forbes - Piedmonter - KTVU - Press-Enterprise - and 26 related »
Google US News
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Reuters AlertNet - New Englanders should be bracing themselves for stormy weather because severe patterns seem to occur every 3000 years and another one may not be too far off, scientists said on Wednesday.
Here is the forecast: Wet, then dry for 3000 years Independent
Storms loom in 3000-year forecast MSNBC

Google Technology News

I live just north of Boston and less than 3 miles away there was a measurable snow fall today.

  7:43:16 PM  Google It!  comment

categories: Biz

The number three online job site's multi-media ad campaign challenging Monster.com and HotJobs.com just expanded with the help of number one newspaper publisher Gannett.
internetnews.com: Top News
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Tuesday, October 22, 2002 
categories: Biz

SGI stock plunges 37 percent after the high-end computer maker posts lower-than-expected revenue and a loss of $41 million for its first quarter.
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Monday, October 21, 2002 
categories: Financial, Biz

New York Times - Vivendi Universal is rushing suitors of its publishing business, which includes Houghton Mifflin, to submit final bids by today, executives involved in the discussions said. Vivendi, which is trying to sell assets to cut its enormous debt, moved up ...
Vivendi Universal weighs up its Cegetel chances Telecom Paper (subscription)
Opposition hardens to Vivendi publishing sale Financial Times (subscription)
Guardian - Light Reading - Europemedia.net - Forbes - and 10 related »
Google Business News
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categories: Financial, Biz

Boston Globe - Earnings reports from some of the world's largest high-tech companies last week contained few signs that an end to the corporate frugality in technology purchases is near, analysts said.
Before the Bell-Microsoft, 3M fall ; futures lower Forbes
Microsoft 1st quarter profit, sales surge Star
CBS MarketWatch - ABC News - and 16 related »
Google Business News
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categories: Biz

Tom Sullivan writes about how Apple's new products are positioning the company for a larger share of the enterprise market. I ask, exactly how will this come to be? Better technology alone is not the answer as been proven over and again many times. The Apple switch ads seem to have hit a few nerves at MS. But MS has a lot of nerve$ so a full frontal attack won't work. It's an intriguing problem that I find fascinating.
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categories: SciTech, Biz

We are trying to make a PIM which is substantive enough and enticing enough to make people want to move to it from whatever they are currently using, which statistically is probably Microsoft Outlook. I'm not going to bash Outlook here. Suffice it to say that while feature-rich, it is very complex, which renders most of its functionality moot. Its information sharing features require use of Microsoft Exchange, a server-based product, which is both expensive and complex to administer. Exchange is overkill for small-to-medium organizations, which we think creates on opportunity we intend to pursue (as well of course as serving individual users)

Have I mentioned it's going to run on Macintosh, Linux, and Windows and will not require a server? This is an ambitious goal, but we are convinced is possible to achieve using a cross-platform tool kit. (We are working with wxWindows/wxPython).

Also, everything is going to be fully open sourced.

This entails making sure we dot our I's and cross out T's with respect to all the features a product must have to be best-of-class, without sacrificing ease of use. We need to worry about migration paths from existing products, synchronization with PDA's and a whole host of details beyond core functionality which are required to make a truly first-rate product. On top of that, we have to have perhaps half a dozen killer features elsewhere unavailable, which I will be writing about in future entries. (Don't mean to tease; there's just too much to say all at once). One area which I will mention is that we have a lot of faith that the general and powerful information-sharing technology (built on top of Jabber) we are embedding, will make it trivially simple
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categories: Culture, Biz

"Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance."
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categories: Financial, Culture, Biz

Paul Krugman in NYTimes.

"Over the past 30 years most people have seen only modest salary increases: the average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998 dollars (that is, adjusted for inflation), rose from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999. That's about a 10 percent increase over 29 years -- progress, but not much. Over the same period, however, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top 100 C.E.O.'s went from $1.3 million -- 39 times the pay of an average worker -- to $37.5 million, more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary workers."
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categories: Culture, War

A parent pleads to Bush for the childrens future.
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categories: SciTech, Biz

It's a longtime dream: IT services piped into the workplace like electricity, so businesses can tap into them only when they need them--and pay for only what they use.
CNET News.com
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Saturday, October 19, 2002 
categories: Culture

The Austin Torpedoes will be performing Saturday night October 19th at Cafe Amante, 347 Main St in Woburn MA. The music starts at 8PM. Hope to see you all there!

To get to the club: Take Interstate 93 N or S to exit 36. Follow Montvale ave to the intersection with Main st at Woburn Center. The Cafe will be on your right at the corner.
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Friday, October 18, 2002 
categories: Biz

San Francisco Chronicle - After nearly a year of slowly rising revenue, Extreme Networks reported Wednesday that its sales dropped 11 percent to $100.6 million in the most-recent quarter, prompting further job cuts at the Santa Clara company.
Extreme Reports Q1 Earnings Light Reading
Extreme's Q1 net loss narrows while sales sag San Jose Mercury News
TheStreet.com - Forbes - and 10 related »
Google Technology News
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categories: Financial, Politics

I'm not receiving SS yet but next month my rent is increasing by 12.5% after last years increase of 20%. I know that my food costs have increased a similar amount. Perhaps the prices of fundamentals like food and shelter are not included in the governments calculations?
The numbers don't lie, people lie about the numbers.

USA Today - Social Security recipients will get a 1.4% cost-of-living increase in their monthly checks next year, the smallest increase in four years, reflecting a slowdown in inflation caused by the weak economy.
Social Security sees small hike in benefit checks Houston Chronicle
Social Security pay up slightly for retirees Atlanta Journal Constitution
MSNBC - Washington Post - CBS News - Minneapolis Star Tribune - and 50 related »
Google Business News
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Thursday, October 17, 2002 
categories: Sportz

A picture named Phelpwanted.jpg

This picture says it all.

 

 

 

 


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Wednesday, October 16, 2002 
categories: Financial, Biz, Politics

A picture named story.dems.economy.jpg
Now let's see if this really goes forward or if this is just a weak willed photo op. Come on you guys where is your backbone?

CNN - Gephard, center, with Sen.Paul Sarbanes, left, and Rep. Charles Rangel during an economic forum last week.
Gephardt Unveils $200B Economic Plan ABC News
US Rep Gephardt Outlines Economic Revival Plan Quicken
Reuters - San Francisco Chronicle - BBC - Washington Post - and 30 related »
Google US News
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categories: Financial, Biz

Which sectors see better times ahead? Gannett and other publishers provide clues.
The Motley Fool
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Groceries, prescription drugs, and low interest rates on investments contribute to the problem.
The Motley Fool
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categories: SciTech, Biz

'Build-it-and-they-will-come' is out. Instead, reinvigorating the market requires a complex alchemy of supply, demand, competition and regulation, experts say.
internetnews.com: Top News
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categories: SciTech

Four of my friends left for a vacation in Hawaii yesterday. They may get a surprise of a lifetime if this puppy blows. Stay safe you guy's.

ABC News - VOLCANO, Hawaii Oct. 15 Mauna Loa is stirring after 18 years of inactivity, and an eruption could devastate the neighborhoods built on the volcano's slopes in the intervening years, scientists said Monday.
Mauna Loa volcano stirring in Hawaii CNN
Hawaiian Volcano Worries Scientists CBS News
KHNL-TV/KHBC/KOGG - West Hawaii Today - Penn Live - Honolulu Advertiser - and 19 related »
Google US News
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Tuesday, October 15, 2002 
categories: Biz

As digital content grows in popularity, consumer-electronics makers are tuning in to hard drives as inexpensive storage devices.
CNET News.com
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categories: Politics

ABC News - A look at what some Democrats considering a run for the White House have said about the economy this year.
Bush begins 3-week stump for Republicans in tight races San Francisco Chronicle
Bush: Congress Should Act on Economic Bills Salt Lake Tribune
New York Times - Minneapolis Star Tribune - Reuters AlertNet - Newsday - and 52 related »
Google US News
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Monday, October 14, 2002 
categories: Culture, World

A picture named Columbus.jpg

Happy Columbus Day!
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Back in Massachusetts after a cranked performance at private party in Conway , New Hampshire. Picture this, interstate highway to state highway to town road to gravel road to tire track path to a meadow on the side of a mountain. Excellent! Jill and Mark's place is way cool. Skeeter's were all gone so being outside was pleasant and thanks to Lisa a great bonfire on the side of the mountain to keep the chill away. The only problem was my back. I had a muscle spasm in my lower back before performing. I managed the performance OK but totally stiffened into a sitting position on the return trip. Thank you for driving Don. Arthur, the MoonCats were rockin'. Thanks all.
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Friday, October 11, 2002 
categories: Culture

On Saturday the band will travel to Conway, NH for a private party performance. We've done this before as Arthur (formerly of The Kool Whip Boyz and Strange Fruit) passes us an invite every year. This will be the first time with Seitu in the band. He's a good sport but I'm not sure how well he handles cold temps. I did advise him to bring extra warm clothing. Flannel shirts and fuzzy hats r'us.

Next week two gigs! Lisa and Randal's wedding and return to Cafe Amonte in Woburn , MA.
  3:44:36 PM  Google It!  comment


categories: Financial, Biz

ABC News - Shoppers, jittery about their own job security and the shaky stock market, continued to penny pinch in September, dimming prospects for a solid holiday season.
Retail blues San Francisco Chronicle
Retail chains report dismal sales in Sept. Boston Globe
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Arkansas Democrat Gazette - Taipei Times - Hartford Courant - and 78 related »
Google Business News
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categories: Financial, Biz

Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, reported third-quarter net income yesterday of $2.4 million, a drop of about 85 percent from the $16.7 million in the quarter a year ago. Revenue fell about 11 percent, to $352.4 million from $397.6 million a year earlier.

The chief executive, Peter R. Kann, called the business environment for The Journal "uncontrollable and awful."

"From a simplistic point of view, we've gone from a market nine months ago that was trying to look ahead and assume the best, to a market looking a foot ahead and assume the worst."
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categories: Financial, Biz

The telecommunications equipment maker, which will also report a wider-than-expected loss in the fourth quarter, said the layoffs will reduce its total work force to 35,000.
CNET News.com
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categories: Financial, Biz

Plus, yahoo for Yahoo!, and digital radio loud and clear.
The Motley Fool

iSay - GET OUT OF SECURITIES! What a misnomer, securities, should be insecurities. The market is filled with manipulators, liars, and thieves. You are gambling with your principle. Find something that has real value, that you understand and buy it.

  10:27:17 AM  Google It!  comment


ABC News - WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 Advocates of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks are blaming the White House after the collapse of an announced agreement to create the panel.
Deal on 9/11 panel falls through CNN
Deal for independent Sept. 11 probe reached Boston Globe
United Press International - Seattle Post Intelligencer - Reuters AlertNet - Washington Post - and 88 related »
Google US News
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categories: Culture, Biz, Politics

What distinguishes the leader from the misleader are his goals. Whether the compromise he makes with the constraints of reality -- which may involve political, economic, financial or people problems -- are compatible with his mission and goals or lead away from them determines whether he is an effective leader. And whether he holds fast to a few basic standards (exemplifying them in his own conduct) or whether "standards" for him are what he can get away with, determines whether the leader has followers or only hypocritical time-servers.

The second requirement is that the leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege. Effective leaders are rarely "permissive." But when things go wrong -- and they always do -- they do not blame others. If Winston Churchill is an example of leadership through clearly defining mission and goals, Gen. George Marshall, America's chief