Thursday, January 20, 2005

Boing Boing: Sony: DRM cost us the Walkman we forget to take into account thecosts of internal competition. Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., said he and other Sony employees have been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod, mainly because the Tokyo company had music and movie units that were worried about content rights... High-ranking Sony officials have rarely publicly said their proprietary views were a mistake. Kutaragi, who has long been viewed as a candidate to lead Sony, was unusually direct in acknowledging Sony had made an error and blaming proprietary concerns from its entertainment division. Posted by douglass carmichael 6:56:47 PM    comment []

outsourcing innovation Tech innovation future http://www.cxo.com/go/index.html?ID=1615&;PMID=2389567&s=1&f=1 Innovation Ships Out U.S. computer makers such as Dell, Motorola and HP are outsourcing not just the manufacture but the design of new products to offshore companies. Could this be the end of America's innovative edge in electronics? BY CHRISTOPHER KOCH Buy a laptop anywhere in the world and there is a one-in-four chance that T.J. Fang will process the order. You'll just never know it. Posted by douglass carmichael 3:29:32 PM    comment []

Does tsunami relief dry up other giving? - slate System thinking, we need to learn.. President Bush in early January proclaimed: "The greatest source of America's generosity is not our government; it's the good heart of the American people." He's right. So far, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, private relief charities have raised more than $480 million for tsunami recovery efforts, far more than the $350 million committed by the government. These impressive figures have been accompanied by a huge and unseemly amount of self-congratulation. It's especially unseemly in the case of the government contributions because the federal money is most likely coming out of existing aid budgets--any new money for reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Indonesia will likely mean less money for sub-Saharan Africa. Can the same be said about private donations? Will the private tsunami relief dry up other charitable giving? History and anecdote suggests it will. Crain's New York Business this week had a fine piece about how five New York nonprofits working in fields such as homelessness and hunger have seen their direct-mail donations fall off a cliff in recent weeks. "Some groups such as Bailey House, which helps homeless people who have AIDS, have even started receiving letters from longtime donors warning that this year's gifts are being redirected to the tsunami relief effort," writes reporter Miriam Kreinin Souccar. The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" mentions that at Brooklyn prep school Packer Collegiate, a "fifth-grade bake sale, which had originally been intended to benefit a less fortunate school in Tanzania, was jointly dedicated to Tanzania and relief for tsunami victims." Posted by douglass carmichael 3:24:14 PM    comment []

New yorker on Alawi Five centuries? no wonderthis is so intense. The elections were meant to solidify a spirit of Iraqi national unity, but the upcoming vote has only increased the tensions among the country’s ethnic groups. The removal of Saddam abruptly disempowered Iraq’s Sunni minority, which had ruled Iraq for nearly five centuries. The resulting Sunni hostility toward American occupation forces—and their fears of being subjugated by Iraq’s Shiite majority—has inflamed the insurgency. Many Sunnis fear that Shiite parties will win the elections and install an Islamic theocracy closely linked to Iran’s. Some Sunni leaders have called for a boycott of the elections. Posted by douglass carmichael 3:09:01 PM    comment []

Rice Doublespeak at Senate Rice and Iran, from Juan Cole Rice responded concerning Iran that it was hard to have an engagement with a country that wanted to see Israel destroyed. It is such a simple-minded thing to say. Uh, let me see. In the 1980s wasn't it the Khomeini regime that sold Israel petroleum in exchange for spare parts for its American weaponry? Wasn't it the Israelis who put Reagan up to the Iran-Contra scandal by suggesting that the US ship TOWs to Iran in return for an end to the Lebanese hostage crisis? Even when it was more radical, and despite all the rhetoric, Iran was willing to deal with Israel in ways that helped the latter enormously. It is true that some Iranian leaders, like Rafsanjani, say frightening things about Israel. But Rafsanjani has no executive power, and when he was president he didn't actually act on such sentiments. The point of engaging the Iranian regime would be to gradually ween it away from such extremism. Iran hasn't launched any aggressive wars in the region, or threatened to use weapons of mass destruction, unlke some other countries (the US had full diplomatic relations with Iraq in the 1980s at a time when it had done both of these things.) I am very uncomfortable in having US national security policy and diplomacy dictated by how politicians in a country talk about our non-Nato allies (with whom, by the way, we do not even have a mutual defense pact). And I am very suspicious that now that Iraq is a basket case, all of a sudden Ariel Sharon is calling on the US to attack Iran. If Rice is going to be a successful Secretary of State, she simply has to get back control of US foreign policy from the Likudniks in the Bush administration. Posted by douglass carmichael 12:50:03 PM    comment []

Cole on Iran As you may recall for a year I have been saying the real focus of Bushco is on the broader nuclear strategic issues, and that the admin would go after Iran. The logic is filling in. " The Pentagon and also Pakistan are denying the report heatedly. But it makes sense. Iran has formed a close military alliance with India, Pakistan's chief rival in South Asia, and Iran has come out on top in the new Afghanistan, with Tajik and Hazarah allies displacing the largely Pushtun, Pakistan-oriented Taliban. And Pakistan has reason not to want Iran to get nukes, thus surrounding Pakistan with nuclear powers on both the east and the south. So Pakistan has every reason to cooperate with the US against Iran. "   and for Hersh http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact Posted by douglass carmichael 12:04:27 PM    comment []

when a chair is rented.. adventures in the new economy The replacement of property by lease hods undermines the independence Locke wanted private property to suppot. In jest,which means seriously, "Cyborg researcher Steve Mann has produced a piece of conceptual art called "License to seat." It's a chair with "magnetic stripe card reader and spikes that retract when a seating license is downloaded from a license server in response to input from the card reader incoroprated into the chair. The license server is in the 19 inch relay rack behind the Internet Chair" The piece makes a point about the rentware world we're fast approaching, where individuals are stuck in a kind of feudal relationship with commercial entities, who reach into our homes and track and bill us for the use of our household goods. Link (Thanks, Ethan!) " Posted by douglass carmichael 10:44:55 AM    comment []

Looking to Apply Lessons Learned (washingtonpost.com) This seems sardonically true. The physical signs of change are most evident in the president. His hair is grayer, and, by his admission, he is a few pounds heavier. But is he different in other, deeper ways? That is more difficult to answer, with considerable evidence that his presidency and agenda have changed more than he has. Posted by douglass carmichael 7:39:06 AM    comment []

Health as population growth is ill for some. The previous item suggests that economic health means natioanl growth, through birth and immigration. But "health" means for the owners of capital, not those sqeezed at the lower end by increasing populations and lower wages. This is an important discussion to follow up. Posted by douglass carmichael 7:19:55 AM    comment []

Rubin on Japan and social security The social security debate may be a distraction. The best analysisI have read is that it is an effort to set up a difference beteween dems and repubicans in 2006/08. But the following by Ex Clinton Sec of treasury Bob Rubin makes another good point. "Rubin adds that the stock market is hardly a sure bet. "You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen." " and Even private-accounts-meister Newt Gingrich bagging on the crisis claim? "The combination of higher birth rates and more immigration makes the United States the healthiest of developed nations. This is not a crisis," says the former Speaker, according to Bloomberg.... Posted by douglass carmichael 7:05:40 AM    comment []

Regrets Richard Armitage in a press conference on retiring as undersecretary of state said something so well many of us wish I had been sent by the leadership of the country . Daily Kos — Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said: Posted by douglass carmichael 6:54:01 AM    comment []