Open Source Software has , as any who are involved know, a dual edge to the sword. It delivers great range and depth to how problems , especially in programming can be solved. But on the other hand its money making model is down right monastic. Open Sourcers in programming for example can charge...
Kobe did it alone – brought the NBA Championship to LA as the lone and prime star of the Lakers. But that is the exception, not the rule. Pittsburg Penguins won Ice Hockey’s Stanley Cup with three stars – Sidney Crosby, Mark Andre Fleury, and Evgenii Malkin. The...
David Brooks of the NYTimes has said the notion of Financial Oligarchs is nonsense; rather the financial upheaval of the past two years and its consequent debilitating recession can be attributed to …. “stupidity”. I would like to quote some dissenting opinions. First, from the Atlantic there is : “The crash has laid bare...
There is a compelling article in the Telegraph on Islamic Finance. The problem is Sharia Law and its restrictions on loans and charging interest with its consequent implications for Islamic financing. The problem is that in Kuwait the Islamic financial firms are trying to work around the loans and interest restrictions in Sharia Law....
There are two books that I am “reading” and they have an intriguing confluence. One is the Tale of Two Cities in audiobook format. This is Charles Dickens’ alternately brutal and romantic tale of the French Revolutionary Times – it might be thought of as one of the first thriller novels. This audiobook reading...
Barack Obama’s major impact on the change in power and the US Presidency is not that he is extremely well briefed and knowledgeable about a wide range of issues. Nor is that he can speak eloquently and with purpose on the topics and problems he is confronted with. No the outstanding qualities that are...
After IBM, What Now for Sun? is the title of a good article at Business Week assessing the consequences of no merger between IBM and and Sun. But the better question is our title. Over the past 20 years and despite leading the US on patents, IBM has slowly but surely become the image...
In a previous posting, we have said that now more than ever before, durable, well paying jobs are now the Gold Standard for government’s in bolstering their economies. The problems, especially for developed countries like the US and Europe are threefold: 1)Manufacturing (the best durable and well paying jobs) has been exported overseas, primarily...
Tom Friedman has written 3 good books on the MidEast and has a command of whats happening in socio-economic trends throughout the Worldas evidenced in his 2 books the World is Flat and Hot, Crowded and Flat. So his commentary on the Gaza incursion is required reading. Unfortunately it must be takien against a...
Here is a story ostensibly about something else but really that indicates there will be a changing of the guard in the Financial World. One of many.
Both fascinating and frustrating reading. The story of Joseph Needham collecting together the history and legacy of China's technological triumph's is utterly fascinating. But frustrating is the failure of Winchester to shed clear light on why a)China did not already have such a hitorical trove in Beijing and b) why did China miss out on the Industrial Revolution while Japan, even more reclusive, did not.
