interesting article about

the problem msft is having with users who stick to older versions of windows. it appears that a bigger problem than the open-source/linux threat is that users just stick with stuff that still works. after all, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, right?

most people know that the fortunes of msft (at least financially) are tied to pc-upgrade cycles. as computers have become faster, cheaper, and more feature-rich, there is just less urgency to replace them. while client and information worker will continue to be the cash generators in the company, msft is smart to be looking at other sources of revenue.

that said, here's an article from msft watch that talks about how xp might wear the install-crown by the end of the year.

msft is censoring

chinese blogs. this should be no surprise as google has availed itself of the same concession: this is just a necessary evil to do business in china. while i don't like the idea of censoring words like "democracy", "freedom", and "human rights", i understand why it's being done.

so aol is

going to give out free content. this sounds like a case of "too little, too late" but aol does still have a massive subscriber base, and if it can create compelling, proprietary content, its strategy might work.

first post from

seattle. vic and i got in on sunday afternoon after 3.5 days of uneventful driving, except for my blown tire in nd and vic's $230 ticket (he was doing 83 in a 65 mph zone) in the same state. we stopped in eau claire, wi, bismarck, nd, and missoula, mt. i had to spend $150 to get two new tires in bismarck, but i probably would have needed to do this anyways sooner rather than later. i thought i caught a nail or something, but the mechanic said that it looked like my tire was just plain worn-out.

it was an interesting sensation when my tire blew out: i was flying along at 80 mph when i heard a loud pop and then the proverbial thud-thud-thud of a blown tire. so i had to pull off on the side of the road and put on the spare. i was 90 miles from bismarck, and since i couldn't go over 45 mph on the spare, it took me two hours to get into bismarck. the whole shebang probably set me back about three hours in total.

what surprised me about the trip was the beauty of montana and western north dakota. the gorges, ravines, sheer cliffs, big skies...amazing. montana is truly god's country.

i couldn't help but notice how white middle america is. i constantly got stares in these small towns: not out of animosity, but out of curiosity, i think. people out there just don't see a lot of chinese people, and i stuck out like a sore thumb. several girls were digging me at the bar we went to in bismarck, nd, however: i like to think that it's because of my good looks (haha) but i think a lot of it had to do with my relative exoticism.

middle america: the red states: agrarian communities are dying. so many of the people i saw were in their 60s and 70s: i think that it's much easier for the the young ones, with the advent of the internet and cable television, to find out that there's very little opportunity (and going-on) in these small towns these days, and get the hell out as soon as they can.

our apartment is pretty sweet. we're on the 21st floor and have a decent view. the nicest thing is that we have our own smoking balcony, which is also perfect for a keg. vic got the master bedroom, but we each get our own bathrooms. my only complaints would be that the furniture is kind of cheap, and that i got shafted on the lighting. i only got one lamp in my bedroom, and it's a 40 watt bulb, if that. i called northwest suites to request another lamp (since vic got 2) but they want to charge me $30 for the delivery of a lamp - for that amount, i could buy my own lamp! well, i suppose i'll have to live with poor lighting in my bedroom for the summer.

seattle is really cold. i should have packed more cold-weather clothing. i expect, however, that it'll get warmer in july and august. on the tour of seattle i went on today, the guide said that seattle averages 75 degrees in the summer, and 45 in the winter. apparently, seattle gets two months of gorgeous days, three months of cloudy days, and seven months of dreary. in the summer, it doesn't get dark until 9:30 pm (we're quickly approaching summer solstice) but gets dark at 3:30 pm in the winter. the guide said this explains why seattle-ites do a lot of stuff indoors, even though it's known as being a very outdoorsy city.

today was my first day - orientation. most of it was spent filling out forms and whatnot, and getting the standard spiel the company gives to all incoming employees. the mba interns separated from the undergrads at lunchtime - i was surprised to learn that the company will hire approximately 950 interns this year, 50 of whom are pursuing mbas.

at lunch, we introduced ourselves, and got a chance to hear from some former mba interns and now full-time employees. the key points i pulled from the luncheon:

1. nail the job/get the offer - basically, set a precedent/expectations and work hard

2. don't just work - get involved with social activities, both with the mba intern community and with the company at-large. apparently, the exec luncheons are really valuable opportunities and i should try not to miss them.

3. network, network, network not only with mba interns, but also with other people in the organization. i have somewhat of a goal to contact at least one person every day, but i doubt that meeting 90 people in my three months here will be possible. i'll be happy if i get 1/3 of this.

tomorrow, i meet with my mentor, who i'm pretty happy with. as well, the mba interns are going to the mariner game (playing the phillies) so that should be a good opportunity to meet the other 40 or so interns i haven't met yet.

possibly the worst

and the funniest thing just happened to me...i woke up, it's 5:30 am. but i thought that it was 5:30 pm, and that i somehow had slept through my pricing final scheduled to begin at 3 pm today. i looked at the time and out the window; my mind raced to understand how i could have possibly slept through such an important test. i flipped and was running around my apt. looking for a phone number for the professor, so as to apologize profusely and to beg to re-take the exam. fortunately, it won't come to that: i just need to wait 9.5 hours before it starts. you should have seen me; i was acting like my world had ended.

a nice article

about craigslist and how it's succeeding where former stalwarts like ebay are failing. as the article mentions, ebay owns 25% of craigslist, but this isn't why ebay is paying attention - indeed, because craigslist model is to be more of a community than a business, things like revenue and profitability are pretty low on the priority list - ebay's paying attention because it's trying to figure out how to adapt some of what has made cl successful to its own businesses, with an eye towards generating shareholder value.

implicitly, this can't be achieved, however, since it is by virtue of the fact that cl is not run like a business that makes it so successful. the allure of cl is that it's pretty much free, and that users can control their own actions on the site without being constrained by cost limitations. one might expect that cl could be brought down by an onslaught of spam, but cl has a fanatic base of users who see the cl community as their own, and police it accordingly.

the article does a pretty good job of articulating why cl is as successful as it is. i don't see cl's growth slowing any time soon and would bet that, within the next five years, traffic on cl will eclipse that of ebay. in terms of value per user, cl has most likely surpassed ebay already. the next time ebay thinks about raising rates for its services, it should think twice.

news.com is reporting

a "high impact" development in the world of movie swapping.

personally, i don't see this making much of a difference. after all, if i'm buying a dvd, i'm buying it for its picture quality; all of the extras are just a side-benefit, if a benefit at all. of course, i'm a poor proxy of the average american consumer, given my avowed anti-materialism and bias against consuming mainstream media. still, i have to wonder how many people actually buy dvds, just for the extras. in evc parlance, i would think these features have little differentiation value.

accordingly, i don't see how this development is going to alter the growth of movie file-sharing on the darknet. the question here to ask is: would having extras built into a file make a swapper more likely to download a movie? i don't think so. if i'm a fileswapper and i want to download a movie for viewing, i'm doing it because i want to see the movie, not because i want to see the extras. hell, i don't even watch the extras on my dvds now - most annoy me, in fact.

some commentary on

sun's recently-announced purchase of storagetek.

now i'm no sun expert, but even i can see that this is sun's last big gamble. using $4.1B of its $7.4B cash hoard, sun is still left with some serious firepower, but if this acquisition fizzles, sun is in deep sh*t (not that it's not already up the creek).

as a casual sun-watcher, i've got to say that the company seems to be casting about for something to re-ignite its growth. partnering with msft, getting into grid computing, buying storage companies...either the guys at sun are very smart and have an integrated strategy, or they are just looking for something, anything, to make sun relevant. i'm sure they diligenced the hell out of this deal, though, so they have to have their reasons: i'm just as curious as anyone else to see how this changes the competitive landscape. after all, acquisitions have no meaning unless they can change the rules of the game.

while msft is

no doubt thawing to the idea of doing more open source projects and collaborating with the open source community, i have to wonder how the company is going to fold these projects into its business model i.e. how does msft make a business case? one argument i can think of is this: the more msft gets comfortable with open source, the more open source users would be willing to use msft products in hybridized development efforts. is this more proof of msft's increasing focus on services and solutions and away from products?

perhaps more evidence

that open source vs. msft is just as much about ibm vs. msft

a dated slashdot post,

but an important one: windows servers neck and neck with unix. despite all the dialogue about open source, i have to believe that the people at msft aren't too worried. open source is making inroads at the expense of solaris (sun), not msft, which is something watchers have known for a while.

cnet speculates that

the xbox 360 and ps3 will signal the death knell of pc gaming.

while the writer makes good points, i don't think that pc gaming will ever completely die. next-gen consoles will certainly put a dent in the pc gaming business, but not for a lengthy period of time. while the consoles will offer better performance/$ in the near-term, with technology cycles exhibiting increasing compression going forward, it will only be a matter of time before pcs match and exceed the performance/$ of next-gen consoles.

while the market of extreme gamers who have to play on the edge is not large, it will always be around, guaranteeing that there will be pc gaming going forward.

since notproud sold

out by putting a bunch of ads on the site (i wrote a letter to complain about this but they defended the ads as necessary to compensate for the hours of editing that now go into the site every day, which i can understand, but still be disappointed about), i don't read it much anymore. i have discovered a new confessions site, however, which stands less of a chance of going corporate (well, less reason to do so), because of one factor: to post a confession, you must submit a physical 4x6 postcard of your confession (+art) to the website-owner, who then scans it onto the site. this should cut down on prolific posters and thus, volume. check it out here.

i happened upon

a talk given by jack fuller, pulitzer-prize winner, novelist, former publisher of the chicago tribune, and trustee of the university of chicago i.e. a very accomplished man.

i was there only because i read that there was going to be free food, but ended up staying for the entire two hours; it was well worth it.

the most enlightening nuggets i gleaned from the talk:

the toughest thing about journalism, according to jack, is not figuring out what’s important and what’s not. this answer was in response to a question about how the bush administration (and administrations before it) will issue a statement about something important, but then try to divert the public’s attention by simultaneously releasing a statement about something that’s encouraging or entertaining, but not terribly important.

the real challenge, then, is not figuring out what’s of substance in the world: there will always be smart people, and tenacious people who can figure out what really is important. the toughest part is getting the rest of public, the ignorant masses, as it were, to read about the important things, things that they don’t even know are important.

it’s about crafting a story, and having the skill to get people to pay attention to the real story, and to have the patience to stick with it, when they’re so much more drawn to the useless, meaningless newsbytes and video clips.

with the onslaught of information that assaults each american these days, and with the proliferation of all kinds of media through countless channels, this skill has only grown in importance.

personally, i’m disheartened: people would rather watch reality tv, play videogames, read maxim and cosmo, and worry about who’s going to be next american idol than think about the real world and its real problems: the industrialization of china and its environmental consequences, the censorship and crimes committed by authoritarian regimes, and the ongoing conflict in the mideast, for example.

and so it falls upon those (not necessarily including myself) who have the ability to not only sift through the detritus to pick out the important stories but also to give these stories voices that everyone else can understand.

jack, in response to questions i posed about the value of business school classes about leadership and management (managing the workplace, for example) and about the possibility that business schools are doing something wrong or not doing enough to produce high-quality business leaders (interestingly, he sidestepped both questions: the first by responding that he didn’t know enough about what was being taught in these classes to be able to make judgments; the second he just didn’t address at all), spoke about leadership. now the things he said i have heard many times and believe to be true, but they bear worth repeating:

leadership can be taught, and it can be learned, but not in a classroom: leaders, like everyone else, have to learn by doing. jack referred to the following example, in reference to his experience at the following tribune: he was in the habit of placing leaders in management roles, not high in the organization, but at the ground level – the printing-room floor, for example – to see if they could lead people who were not as educated, motivated, or bright, for it’s only at the operational level (leading a squad of thirty soldiers in a barracks is another example he gave) can leadership be learned.

other “keys” to leadership:

- being able to convince people that you believe 100% of what you’re telling them

- being sincere and honest in every communication

- leading by doing: showing your subordinates that you’re not asking more of them than you are asking of yourself

- knowing how to read people’s motives; in the chicago tradition: being able to offer each person around the table the appropriate incentive to get him/her to do what you want

he described the act of telling some people one thing and another group of people something else (your subordinates vs. executive management) as leadership “death”

he also said that although a “mask” is always required (he referred to an excellent book called “the mask of command”, a book about military leadership), these days people want to see some emotion: from under that mask, a leader must let a bit of humanity slip – perhaps not vulnerability – so that subordinates can see that they’re not being led by an automaton. jack mentioned, however, in his years of business experience, he always had a mask on: while he may have been really struggling on the inside, there was no way he could let people under him see this inner turmoil. with respect to some financial troubles the tribune had back in the day, jack said that he always had to convince people that “we’ll get through this okay, everything’s going to be alright” even when he didn’t believe it himself, which now that i think about it, contradicts something he said earlier about believing 100% what you tell other people. i suppose there’s skill in knowing absolutely that you’re right but having the right plans in place in case you’re wrong.