Sunday, June 29, 2003

Garden Lessons...

 
The previous owners of this place put in concrete beds for gardens. Planting in one, I discovered it doesn't get a lot of sun, so all my stuff is long and skinny as it reaches up for more light thru the shadows of the Giant Oak Tree above it. 36" high Dill is just starting to seed...Lettuce and Chard didn't do too well either. Zucchini blossoms out nicely, then they fall off. Tomato plants real leggy, but with Staked Support/Cages/Trellis help, fruiting out some now. Green Beans did okay; cucumbers blossoming and fruiting.

I did a bunch of "Kitchen herbs" in small pots, but I dragged those out into the middle of the yard for full sun, with great success. Lotsa Sweet Basil leaves harvested already. Roses in Pots, which worked real well in California, seem to be catching up. Deer not a problem yet. Lots of days of overcast skies, but not rain. We've been missing Severe Weather to the South and To The North thru southern Missouri.

Squirrels seem to want to dig up the Peat Pots I used for some transplants. They dig up a plant, but don't eat it - just tear the rotting peat planter apart. Rocks ineffective as projectile weapons beyond 50 feet, and after age fifty.






posted by James 12:34 PM

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Then, China will get all the gold...

 
Interesting And Cogent Observations from Mogambo GuruÉ.


Another view on How the Chinese Will Do It. The Confucian habits, evolved by surviving for many millenia, of familial devotion, a sense of history, frugality, education, hard work and so on are much like those of the Jews Ð whoÕve learned that being GodÕs Chosen is no Picnic in the DesertÉ(Mebbe this is just - as socio-biologists might say Ð ÒselectedÓ survivalist behaviorÉbased on the historical record that, well...it worksÉ)


Excerpts from latest MG (full essay at thedailyreckoning.comÉ)

=================

The Dog That Didn't Bark

- Marshall Auerback, in a very interesting essay entitled "Argentina, Not Japan," an essay that I am sure will be referenced on many a website, says something that I have long said, but somehow when he says it I have a bigger sense of doom.

We both agree that China is the new Big Boy On The Block. And, he reminds us, these guys are Confucian.

So what are Confucians? I'm not sure, but I remember that this Confucius fella said a lot of funny and off-color one-liners when I was a kid. I know that much, anyway. And they always started off with "Confucius say..." and then it usually had him saying something that pertained either to sex, genitalia or excrement, for the most part. But I have a feeling that there is more to old Confucius than that, as I had never heard that the Chinese had adopted dirty jokes as a political organization.

And it turns out that there IS more to Confucius than that, as I gather from reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica in my usual superficial way. They are, for all practical purposes, the archetypical Jews. Namely, strong sense of reverence for family, strong sense of reverence for history, big-time believers in education and self-improvement, hard work, and generally prospering as such. In fact, the book even says, "Historical consciousness is a defining characteristic of Confucian thought."

So, we have a smart, educated Chinese with strong nationalist, traditionalist and familial fervor. They also have, in case you were wondering, a few thousands of years of pleasantly positive experience with gold. I will soon reveal to you why I make that interesting and cogent observation.

But one thing that I did notice, while I was reading, was literary equivalent of the Dog That Didn't Bark. By this puzzling turn of a phrase I mean that there was nothing that intimated that the Chinese have some special love for foreigners in general, or Americans in particular. Therefore, I assume they are as xenophobic and condescending to foreign cultures as everybody else. Maybe more so.

Now, in one of my reveries, usually after I have accidentally ingested various prescription medications in new and untested ratios, I imagine that if I was the emperor of China, and I wanted to bring the joys of The Chinese Way to the whole world, and wanted to end up ruling the world because us hip Chinese dudes are so naturally superior to everybody else, how would I do that?

One way would be to simply invade, kill everybody, and take over the joint. Big project. Big costs. Bad public image, too.

The better way would be to accumulate gold. Get as much of the world's supply as I can get my hands on, declare a gold standard for the yuan , and eventually, by virtue of the accumulation of all the gold in existence, and the gold standard, and thus a strong currency, and the power of a large, Confucian-unified country with vast potential to industrialize, a unbelievable potential to accumulate and service debt, we Chinese fellas would dwarf the rest of the world in size. And then we would end up ruling the world because it would be impossible for us NOT to end up ruling the world. As the punch line went, "I give you fried rice, you cheap Amelican plicks."

To date, I figure that they are just biding their time. But the time of biding may be about over. They are still maintaining the currency-exchange peg as a huge favor to us, to help us out. For which they will naturally expect some favors in return, especially as regards capital and technology to get the long-awaited Century of China up and running. They've been waiting for thousands of years, so, maybe, what is a few more years? Plus, if they are to get industrialized and modern, they are going to need some customers to sell stuff to. Thus, maybe they are hoping that we Americans will continue to soak up their industrial output, and maintaining the yuan-dollar peg is just what the doctor ordered.

Plus, it gives China a weak and falling currency, as the falling dollar drags it down, to the dismay of the other neighboring exporting Asian tigers, who are suffering due to their currency appreciating against the dollar.

So, would the inevitable floating of the yuan mean that the dollar will almost certainly sink more? Is the dollar being artificially held up by the yuan? And thus the hoard of dollar-denominated assets that the whole region is sitting on, in fact the whole freaking world is sitting on, will go down in value, when computed in yuan? And that means a loss? A big loss? A very big, huge loss? A gargantuan freaking loss for somebody?

And so this may explain some of the weird, and I am talking weird with a capital W, as in Weird Things, that have been going on in the stock, bond, futures and options markets. Not to mention, of course, the gold market.

And in this light, the words of Marshall Auerback seem especially chilling. He writes, "The Chinese will let the peg go on for as long as it suits their interests, which are oriented around mercantilism, stability, and working through the myriad of financial and social problems they face. When they make the break from the dollar tie, it is highly conceivable they will have stockpiled a huge amount of gold to back their unit (which may also explain why the Chinese government has been so reticent to provide full disclosure on its official sector purchases of gold over the past decade). Once they feel they have those in order, then they make a play toward becoming the Asian region's reserve currency and ultimately the world's preferred currency."

And why would they want to make a play towards "becoming the Asian region's reserve currency and ultimately the world's preferred currency"? Well, we spent a century bringing the joys of America and Americanism to every part of the globe, often delivered by handsome and rugged American guys wielding machine guns and nuclear weapons on their brawny shoulders.

The Russians spent a good deal of that same century taking the joys of communism and Sovietism to the globe, too. Before that we had the Spanish trying to bring the joys of Spanish imperialism to the world, and the French and the English, too, in their times. And let's not forget the Germans in WWII. And now all we have to do is turn on the TV and we see that religious fanatics intent on bringing the joys of Islam to the world via the expedient of blowing people up. But you think these the only guys who want to rule the world? Hahahaha! You crack me up! Hell, I personally have a desire to rule the world! And believe me that if I ever get to be Emperor of the World, the first thing I will do is to hire you to come to my sumptuous palace and tell me more jokes like that! You are one funny guy! Hahahaha!

Market Meddling

- The Barron's Gold Mining Index hit a new 52-week high, a fact that is conspicuously absent from mainstream reporting.

- The number of S&P 500 futures contracts exploded to a huge new record just before expiration. Being a big believer in conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve government meddling, I naturally look at "outside events" like this with a lot of interest.

This wholesale buying of futures, probably including the Fed, may seem unconventional to you and us doofus people who still laboring under the impression that America has free markets. But remember that the Fed is on record as saying that they will stoop to anything, no matter how stupid, no matter how corrupt, no matter how low, filthy or underhanded, no matter how legal or maybe illegal, no matter how many pornographic web-sites they have to subscribe to, but dang-nabbit this economy IS going to respond to monetary stimulation or everybody will die trying. And getting out our secret decoder rings, we decipher that when they say "to respond," it means to "go up in price." And by "everybody," they mean "you."

But I figure that the market is being rigged also for the foreign holders of US assets, who are probably getting verrrrrrryyyy nervous right about now. And who want to sell. But it is such an enormous pile that selling that gigantic load of US assets would have seismic repercussions of such size that they would probably destroy the world. Perhaps unleashing Godzilla who is, as I recall, slumbering under a mountain outside of Japan, and believe me when I tell you that releasing Godzilla, or any giant, destructive, rampaging primordial creature, is the last thing that the economy needs right now.
===============================

posted by James 5:01 PM

Then, China will get all the gold...

 
Interesting And Cogent Observations from Mogambo Guru….


Another view on How the Chinese Will Do It. The Confucian habits, evolved by surviving fo rmany millenia, of familial devotion, sense of history, frugality, education, hard work and so on are much like the Jews – who’ve learned that being God’s Chosen is no Picnic in the Desert…(Mebbe this is just, as socio-biologists might say – “selected” survivalist behavoir…based on the historical record that, well...it works…)


Excerpts from latest MG (full essay at thedailyreckoning.com…)

=================

The Dog That Didn't Bark

- Marshall Auerback, in a very interesting essay entitled "Argentina, Not Japan," an essay that I am sure will be referenced on many a website, says something that I have long said, but somehow when he says it I have a bigger sense of doom.

We both agree that China is the new Big Boy On The Block. And, he reminds us, these guys are Confucian.

So what are Confucians? I'm not sure, but I remember that this Confucius fella said a lot of funny and off-color one-liners when I was a kid. I know that much, anyway. And they always started off with "Confucius say..." and then it usually had him saying something that pertained either to sex, genitalia or excrement, for the most part. But I have a feeling that there is more to old Confucius than that, as I had never heard that the Chinese had adopted dirty jokes as a political organization.

And it turns out that there IS more to Confucius than that, as I gather from reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica in my usual superficial way. They are, for all practical purposes, the archetypical Jews. Namely, strong sense of reverence for family, strong sense of reverence for history, big-time believers in education and self-improvement, hard work, and generally prospering as such. In fact, the book even says, "Historical consciousness is a defining characteristic of Confucian thought."

So, we have a smart, educated Chinese with strong nationalist, traditionalist and familial fervor. They also have, in case you were wondering, a few thousands of years of pleasantly positive experience with gold. I will soon reveal to you why I make that interesting and cogent observation.

But one thing that I did notice, while I was reading, was literary equivalent of the Dog That Didn't Bark. By this puzzling turn of a phrase I mean that there was nothing that intimated that the Chinese have some special love for foreigners in general, or Americans in particular. Therefore, I assume they are as xenophobic and condescending to foreign cultures as everybody else. Maybe more so.

Now, in one of my reveries, usually after I have accidentally ingested various prescription medications in new and untested ratios, I imagine that if I was the emperor of China, and I wanted to bring the joys of The Chinese Way to the whole world, and wanted to end up ruling the world because us hip Chinese dudes are so naturally superior to everybody else, how would I do that?

One way would be to simply invade, kill everybody, and take over the joint. Big project. Big costs. Bad public image, too.

The better way would be to accumulate gold. Get as much of the world's supply as I can get my hands on, declare a gold standard for the yuan , and eventually, by virtue of the accumulation of all the gold in existence, and the gold standard, and thus a strong currency, and the power of a large, Confucian-unified country with vast potential to industrialize, a unbelievable potential to accumulate and service debt, we Chinese fellas would dwarf the rest of the world in size. And then we would end up ruling the world because it would be impossible for us NOT to end up ruling the world. As the punch line went, "I give you fried rice, you cheap Amelican plicks."

To date, I figure that they are just biding their time. But the time of biding may be about over. They are still maintaining the currency-exchange peg as a huge favor to us, to help us out. For which they will naturally expect some favors in return, especially as regards capital and technology to get the long-awaited Century of China up and running. They've been waiting for thousands of years, so, maybe, what is a few more years? Plus, if they are to get industrialized and modern, they are going to need some customers to sell stuff to. Thus, maybe they are hoping that we Americans will continue to soak up their industrial output, and maintaining the yuan-dollar peg is just what the doctor ordered.

Plus, it gives China a weak and falling currency, as the falling dollar drags it down, to the dismay of the other neighboring exporting Asian tigers, who are suffering due to their currency appreciating against the dollar.

So, would the inevitable floating of the yuan mean that the dollar will almost certainly sink more? Is the dollar being artificially held up by the yuan? And thus the hoard of dollar-denominated assets that the whole region is sitting on, in fact the whole freaking world is sitting on, will go down in value, when computed in yuan? And that means a loss? A big loss? A very big, huge loss? A gargantuan freaking loss for somebody?

And so this may explain some of the weird, and I am talking weird with a capital W, as in Weird Things, that have been going on in the stock, bond, futures and options markets. Not to mention, of course, the gold market.

And in this light, the words of Marshall Auerback seem especially chilling. He writes, "The Chinese will let the peg go on for as long as it suits their interests, which are oriented around mercantilism, stability, and working through the myriad of financial and social problems they face. When they make the break from the dollar tie, it is highly conceivable they will have stockpiled a huge amount of gold to back their unit (which may also explain why the Chinese government has been so reticent to provide full disclosure on its official sector purchases of gold over the past decade). Once they feel they have those in order, then they make a play toward becoming the Asian region's reserve currency and ultimately the world's preferred currency."

And why would they want to make a play towards "becoming the Asian region's reserve currency and ultimately the world's preferred currency"? Well, we spent a century bringing the joys of America and Americanism to every part of the globe, often delivered by handsome and rugged American guys wielding machine guns and nuclear weapons on their brawny shoulders.

The Russians spent a good deal of that same century taking the joys of communism and Sovietism to the globe, too. Before that we had the Spanish trying to bring the joys of Spanish imperialism to the world, and the French and the English, too, in their times. And let's not forget the Germans in WWII. And now all we have to do is turn on the TV and we see that religious fanatics intent on bringing the joys of Islam to the world via the expedient of blowing people up. But you think these the only guys who want to rule the world? Hahahaha! You crack me up! Hell, I personally have a desire to rule the world! And believe me that if I ever get to be Emperor of the World, the first thing I will do is to hire you to come to my sumptuous palace and tell me more jokes like that! You are one funny guy! Hahahaha!

Market Meddling

- The Barron's Gold Mining Index hit a new 52-week high, a fact that is conspicuously absent from mainstream reporting.

- The number of S&P 500 futures contracts exploded to a huge new record just before expiration. Being a big believer in conspiracy theories, especially ones that involve government meddling, I naturally look at "outside events" like this with a lot of interest.

This wholesale buying of futures, probably including the Fed, may seem unconventional to you and us doofus people who still laboring under the impression that America has free markets. But remember that the Fed is on record as saying that they will stoop to anything, no matter how stupid, no matter how corrupt, no matter how low, filthy or underhanded, no matter how legal or maybe illegal, no matter how many pornographic web-sites they have to subscribe to, but dang-nabbit this economy IS going to respond to monetary stimulation or everybody will die trying. And getting out our secret decoder rings, we decipher that when they say "to respond," it means to "go up in price." And by "everybody," they mean "you."

But I figure that the market is being rigged also for the foreign holders of US assets, who are probably getting verrrrrrryyyy nervous right about now. And who want to sell. But it is such an enormous pile that selling that gigantic load of US assets would have seismic repercussions of such size that they would probably destroy the world. Perhaps unleashing Godzilla who is, as I recall, slumbering under a mountain outside of Japan, and believe me when I tell you that releasing Godzilla, or any giant, destructive, rampaging primordial creature, is the last thing that the economy needs right now.
===============================

posted by James 5:01 PM

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Bull Shoals Classified Ad...

 
WANTED: GOOD WOMAN

Must Be Able To Clean, Cook, Sew, Dig Worms And Clean Fish.

Must Have Boat and Motor.

Please send picture of boat and motor.
===========================

(Not really from here; it was clipped from Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review OnLine)

posted by James 6:12 PM

Monday, June 23, 2003

China pulls the plug...?

 
One bullish note from Gold Fans - China is now allowing and encouraging gold ownership by its citizens. And a new financial "product" out shortly on the NYSE (?) will facilitate gold ownership...

and from the Daily Reckoning -
===================

" *** China, believes Marshall Auerback, has the power to shut down the U.S. economy...the way the IMF pulled the plug on Argentina. We reported Auerback's thoughts yesterday. The subject must have been on the U.S. Treasury secretary's mind the same day. In today's news, we find this headline in the Washington Post: "China may float currency, says Snow."

We turn back to Auerback for elaboration: "When they make the break from the dollar tie, it is highly conceivable they will have stockpiled a huge amount of gold to back their unit (which may also explain why the Chinese government has been so reticent to provide full disclosure on its official sector purchases of gold over the past decade). Once they feel they have those in order, then they make a play toward becoming the Asian region's reserve currency and ultimately the world's preferred currency.

"The notion of the remnimbi-based Asian currency union may seem far-fetched today, but so too did the idea of a European currency union, but 15 years ago. In many respects, an Asian monetary union predicated on the RMB would face considerably less difficult obstacles than the euro. In contrast to "Euroland", an Asian currency union predicated on the RMB would start with the presence of one dominant country, China (both economically and culturally), thereby facilitating the adoption of an existing currency, as opposed to the creation of a new one and the concurrent abolition of a multiplicity of national currencies. There is also a huge Chinese Diaspora in the emerging Asian countries; consequently, many of the traditional linguistic and historical barriers that pertain in the EU do not apply to anywhere near the same degree in Asia. There is a common, cultural Confucian ethic throughout the region. There is also a natural predisposition toward saving, making the region the largest repository of global reserves. If such reserves are backed by a large chunk of gold holdings (now being perversely leased or sold by countless Western central banks), then the notion of China at the epicentre of an Asian monetary union becomes eminently more credible.

"What this means in relation to America is that the latter, like Argentina circa 2001, no longer controls its own economic destiny. In the case of the United States, the Sword of Damocles is not the IMF, but China. The death knell for the U.S. economy may well be when the Chinese elect to float their currency because at that stage, many of the other Asian central banks (with the possible exception of Japan) may well find yet another compelling alternative to the U.S. greenback, thereby sending the latter into free fall, creating untold damage to the U.S. credit system. American policymakers, who persistently call for the Chinese remnimbi to be floated, ought to be careful what they wish for. It could well be the precipitating event for the final denouement in this extraordinary period of financial history."

=====================


posted by James 11:41 AM

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Supernova - Excerpts...

 
Consolidation - customers, suppliers, everything (?)

==============================

THE SUPERNOVA REPORT
Provided by Kevin Werbach and pulver.com.
June 18, 2003
..
SOFTWARE
Let's Get Together: The big story of 2003-2004

What do you get when you combine a soft economy with a deregulatory
ideology and a technological discontinuity? One word: consolidation.

In recent weeks, Palm bought Handspring, PeopleSoft announced plans to
acquire JD Edwards, and Oracle announced a stunning hostile takeover
bid for PeopleSoft. That's nothing. Get ready for more big merger
announcements in the months to come.

Consolidation will happen for several reasons. The first is simple
economics: there's only so many dollars to go around. Everyone in
high-tech was hoping that the economic downturn would be over by now,
but we're still bumping along the bottom of the IT spending trough.
The IPO and venture financing windows have cracked open, but nowhere
near wide enough to save hundreds of startups living on borrowed
time. The telecom sector continues to wallow through an out-and-out
depression, not helped by the failure of broadband and 3G wireless to
meet unrealistic expectations. Innovation and opportunity still
exist. Nonetheless, the market as a whole still has too much
capacity.

The US government is throwing gasoline on the fire. The FCC's
decision to loosen media ownership rules is a green light for further
consolidation in those industries. Its new so-called local
competition rules will push more new entrants out of business and give
communications monopolies more reason to choose mergers over real
competition.

The third reason for the coming wave of consolidation is less obvious
to the casual observer. Yet it's probably the most significant. The
technological pressure toward decentralization of communications,
software, and media is turning sources of competitive advantage into
commodities. Instead of big, proprietary, centralized systems with
their lucrative annuity revenue streams, vendors are finding
themselves forced to sell smaller, standards-based components.
Service providers are finding themselves competing against the
radically different economics of edge-based systems, or even their own
customers.

Just as softswitches and SIP servers are replacing switches in telecom
networks at a fraction of the cost, applications built using Web
services and open-source platforms such as Linux are shrinking the
once-booming market for enterprise software. Companies are deploying
Weblog tools and hosted offerings such as Salesforce.com, instead of
writing six-figure checks for content management and customer
relationship management.

More of the action is happening in the outer rings of networks -- the
Intel-based servers, the wireless handsets, and the end-user PCs.
Whether this trend is good or bad depends on your perspective. It
gives users a better deal and more control. But it further shrinks
the available pie for providers of software and infrastructure. The
end result: Everyone must either find a small but lucrative niche, or
get big enough to compete with gorillas like Microsoft, IBM, Cisco,
Nokia, and Sony.

We've seen this before. In the PC business, just about the only ones
making money are Dell (the biggest and most efficient player), and the
small vendors such as Alienware specializing in gaming machines. IBM,
HP/Compaq, Gateway, and Sony are either bleeding or building PCs for
strategic reasons beyond profitability in that market.

The Oracle bid for PeopleSoft is perfect example of what to expect.
Oracle is prepared to spend $6 billion effectively to shut down a
company with 8,000 employees and thousands of blue-chip customers. It
doesn't matter if this is just Larry Ellison "behaving badly."
Whether or not the deal goes through, the fact that it's being taken
seriously shows there's a method to Larry's madness. There is excess
capacity in the market, and consolidation is the way to squeeze it
out. The alternative, which we're seeing in the cases of Lucent,
3Com, Nortel, and possibly Sun, is slow death.

Let me be clear: I'm not too happy about the consolidation wave I see
coming. When companies spend their energy buying each other, they
tend to put less effort into building better products. Major media
companies may squeeze out some inefficiencies by aggregating more
television stations or combining different properties that were
previously off-limits, but that won't do anything to address the major
challenges of digitization, pervasive connectivity, and user control
they face.

Too bad. Markets do what they want to do, and in cases like this,
most efforts to stop them won't make things any better. Just as the
hundreds of US car companies early in the 20th century have dwindled
to three, IT sectors will lose diversity as they mature. Is Wall
Street better thanks to the rampant consolidation among brokerage
houses? Is the accounting industry more effective now that the Big
Seven are the Big Four? It hardly matters.

Of course, smart businesspeople will continue to seize on new
opportunities almost as fast as competitors in the old categories die
off. That's what happens as industries mature. The opportunities for
value creation shift, but the overall ecology can remain healthy and
diverse.

The companies that succeed in the coming period of consolidation won't
necessary be the ones that do the most buying. Cisco, which acquired
more companies than anyone during the Internet boom, has dramatically
slowed its acquisition binge. It's sitting on billions in cash and
can purchase assets and talent for a tiny fraction of 1999 rates. But
it hasn't allowed itself to get caught up in dealmaking for its own
sake. When you hold all the good cards, standing pat may be the best
strategy. On the other side of the equation, sometimes no amount of
scale is enough. Whether local phone companies survive widespread
introduction of voice-over-IP and substitution by wireless services
has little to do with how big or efficient they become.

Consolidation feeds on itself. As soon as one company is "in play,"
it forces everyone else in the sector to take a good hard look at
themselves. Get ready for a game of musical chairs that's not likely
to end until the economy really starts growing again.


Supernova Report
http://pulver.com/supernova/

======================================================================

posted by James 1:42 PM

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

 
Gilder Technology

Excerpts from recent posts by George on his GTR Telecosm Lounge...
=======================

RE: GG - Vonage gg 6/11/03 07:45

Thanks for the reminder. Joe has been trying to get me to look at that company for some time. I am mostly interested in the impact on broadband deployment of creating savings on your voice service that can pay for a cable modem. I was also impressed with Vonage's decision to restrict their service to broadband facilities. They do not pretend that IP telephony works over dial up links.

--GG

RE: UK Admits Deceit-US gg 6/11/03 08:15

What's the deceit? The press could not be given intelligence printouts from secret sources, so the rationales "had to be" cobbled together from non-governmental publications.

When I worked on defense issues in the Senate, I "had to do"it all the time. I refused to accept security clearance so I would not be blamed for divulging "secrets" that were already in the public domain.

No one doubts that since the destruction of the Osiris reactor Saddam has been trying to create weapons of mass destruction. Without the war, perhaps they would have been exhibited in a May day parade some day. But whatever anyone says the key reason for the war was always self defense: to deflate the triumphalism of the Jihad that had attacked on September 11 and would surely have attacked again.

--GG

RE: June GTR to GG? gg? 6/11/03 08:36

Isenberg has been writing about IP telephony or its equivalents for well over six years, as have I (actually 14 years, including Life After Television).? After work on ATT's "True Voice" product, Isenberg has been the most informed champion of real IP telephony since the beginning. All of us have heard alot of IP telephony, but Vonage represented the first time I had actually heard it work better than public switched telephony.

I had a similar experience a decade ago with CDMA. Jacobs and Gilhousen showed me that CDMA could offer superior acoustics as well as far more capacity, but that they were probably going with an 8 bit vocoder to maximize capacity (and thus profits for their customers). I hit the ceiling. Their key customers would be phone users not carriers. My greatest contribution on CDMA was to rant at the Qualcomm people to use the extra capacity to produce superior voice quality rather than just more calls. 13 bit quality is what won for CDMA. Later they succeeded in creating superior acoustics with 8 bits. Vonage offers the first IP telephony that I have heard that focuses on better voice quality. They have a shot at winning. Now the streaming video people have to offer quality better than TV. Today that means putting the show on your hard drive.

--GG

RE: June GTR to GG gg 6/10/03 19:40

Learned some physics, wrote two books in four months, lost the threadon Equinix splits. The world is full of tradeoffs.

--GG

RE: Bush's Reaction gg 6/11/03 08:52

Why is Bush troubled? I'm troubled too, because the Israelis missed their target. Someone has to eliminate the unrepentant mass murderers and suicide impressarios or peace is impossible.

--GG

RE: LNOP gg 6/9/03 09:03

So the entire network sector is in doldrums. What else is new. But as broadband is deployed around the world in the Korean style, Internet traffic is going to roar back and everyone with old networks is going to find themselves on the wrong side of the paradigm. EZchip's (LNOP) ultimate edge is not capacity but flexibility--its seven layer functionality that is usable everywhere from wireless hubs to firewalls. Its ultimate role, I believe, will be to tame the protocol zoo in home entertainment networks. But, of course, if you don't think there is going to be a broadband Internet, you should not be in any of these stocks. But the next issue of the GTR, already done, contains an analysis by Charlie Burger and I on the coming tsunami of traffic.

--GG

RE: EETimes: Edge mania? gg 6/9/03 09:08

The multi-service edge aggregation devices that Dorman of ATT says will be the focus of investment provide perfect slots for EZchips. They have some 20 design wins. I would imagine (without direct knowledge) that many of them fit the category of multi-service or protocol edge aggregation gear.

--GG


RE: JDS/Avnx gg 6/4/03 10:06

A PON is a passive optical network--a system comprising many optical components. In Europe, the dominant form was based on ATM (asynchronous transfer mode). Alcatel still makes these systems as well as EPONs (based on Ethernet). If Alcatel wins some of the contracts, Avanex will presumably supply components for them, along with JDSU.

The Bells seem to be oriented toward BPONs which include a WDM overlay. But as yet there are no signs of Bell interest in advanced PONs based on aggressive proliferation of wavelenghts as in Avanex's early Hong Kong project, and Essex Hyperfine units, but it is possible. In any case, any opening up of broadband in the local loop will galvanize business throughout the network.

--GG



RE: GG : opinion on wi-fi? gg 5/26/03 12:32

Wi-Fi is a reflection of the total botch that the US government has made of wireless regulation. 802.11 is useful and desirable as a LAN and with Intel's help it will prevail in this capacity. Otherwise its 85 megahertz of spectrum, shared with every remote controlled toy and garage door opener and microwave oven and toddler watcher, is a dreadful arena for wireless communications. It is evoking all the hype and hysteria that previously engulfed dot.commerce for one reason only. It is unregulated, escaping both the auction tax and the muddled mazes of cellular regulation. Moved to 5 gigahertz in 802.11A, it will avoid most of the interference and gain more capacity at the cost of even more limited range (scores of feet). If the government authorizes WiFi to break the one watt rules that currently constrain it, the point to point capabilities will increase. But in the technology itself there is nothing of special interest. In general, it probably helps Qualcomm, by popularizing wireless data without satisfying the demand for access beyond "hot spots" and without creating a viable business for anyone except Intel.

--GG

RE: GG : opinion on wi-fi gg 5/26/03 22:01

Thanks for another fascinating post, but I still have my doubts. I fail to grasp the relationship between WiFi and these standards applying to spectrum spans between 10 and 60GHz.?If you denominate as WiFi all the new wireless standards between 802.11b and 802.16a and n, licenced and unlicenced, focused and diffused, below one watt and above, I suppose WiFi will eventually rule the world. But meanwhile the cellular technologies will continue down the learning curve with billions of users and where the OFDM systems offer advantages, they can tap them too.

I also am skeptical about the significance of 30 mile stunts with point to point antennas. Current CDMA systems already do 30 mile transmissions to mobile carriers at 800 kbps and have already deployed full backhaul links to the net.

Point to point links have long been possible and indeed I have seen them deployed in many areas, including such exotic locales as Aspen and Tahoe, and have heard thrilling stories from Nepal. But need I mention Teligent, Winstar, Metricom and the other high frequency carriers to illustrate the obstacles to wide deployment of point multipoint wireless systems.

WiFi currently has the wind behind its back because of the current regulatory snarl everywhere else and because of Intel's search for a new microprocessor edge. But ultimately the successful wireless companies will have to go through the gauntlet that the current providers have already endured--the long slog of rigorous engineering of robust systems and their proof in the field.

Could you clarify some of these issues? How does 802.16 apply to WiFi? Is it the rural solution? I am in the boondocks and SprintPCS now gives me better service most places than my DirecPC (admittedly because of my botched home network). If 802.16 is a backhaul, how is it better than fiber backhauls??Why do so many people expect Qualcomm and its allies to roll over and play dead yet again?

--GG

RE: Government Policies o... gg 5/26/03 16:39

Listen to the technology, folks, not to the technologists, who are the most hopelessly ingenuous group in American politics.
They still actually believe in socialism, for their own high minded reasons, after they have already gathered their pile. Outside their own fields of expertise they are so stupid that they actually imagine they can control the political process in their own interest, when they cannot even fight their way out of the greasy paper bags of the trial lawyers and their pet politicians.

I agree--and have said many times--that the key rule of communications markets is to maintain separation between content and conduit. Companies with desirable content should put it on all conduits. Companies with the best conduits should carry all content. Violating this principle has caused endless friction and frustration at Time-Warner and at every telco that has tried to combine the two functions.

But this is aguide for business strategy. When it is imposed by government it is always perverted. For example, an exception to the content-conduit rule is content that cannot be displayed without costly leading edge conduits that are not otherwise available. When movie companies were barred from owning theaters in the early 1960s, innovation in projection systems screeched to a halt (no more 3D, Cinerama, VistaVision and 70mm screens for ordinary fare). Bar the cable companies from distributing content and they will stop supplying Internet connections, and we will have ample opportunity to discover that WiFi is not vaguely a broadband or even cell-wide service.

Today broadband is an extremely demanding and high risk arena, involving scores of potential technologies in both the optical and wireless domains, that no one can easily anticipate and that can be regulated by government only at the cost of paralysis. Every new technology is a monopoly at the outset. Government bureaucracies for level playing fields and competitive fairness are instantly captured by the incumbent telopolies and serve chiefly to protect them from new companies with disruptive innovations. The companies rich enough to hire lawyers and lobbyists will always and forever control the process, relentlessly supporting the past in the name of progress. Down with Worldcom, evil Internet monopolist; up with ATT in the name of freedom and fairness. Admit it--many of you have been gulled into seeing Bernie Ebbers as a scam artist and Warren Buffett as a stateman-entrepreneur.

To see the political process at work, all you have to do is contemplate the Communications Act of 1996 with all its very high minded pro-competitive, level-playing-field seven players per region rules (with special provisions for women, minorities, native Americans, farmers, and the disabled) and niche beadles in 50 states. ATT has been the most effective lobby in its application and almost persuaded the US government to ban CDMA from the US. Now it wants to keep the local loop in labyrinthine coils in the name of competition and to stifle direct broadcast satellite.

People talk of subsidizing broadband. How about retrenching the taxes that make telecom not only the most regulated but also the most highly taxed industry in the country, short of tobacco and alcohol? People urge municipal broadband. In other words, after killing most private sector telecom, they want governments to cruise in and compete with the survivors using their own money.

The appropriate and positive role of government in this industry is to buy its products, including its best leading edge innovations, for public facilities of all kinds. This is a huge challenge. While government fails horribly in this crucial and desirable procurement role, it is amazing to see otherwise smart people encourage the politicians in their vainglorious pursuit of more power and more pettifoggery in the technology sector.

--GG

RE: Burstein: cable, DSL,... gg 5/27/03 08:42

Why cannot cable offer WiFi?? That is the kind of application that settop boxes are for.

--GG

RE: Burstein: cable, DSL,... gg 5/27/03 08:44

Broadcom was providing WiFi chips for cable before anyone thought to supply them for DSL.

--GG

RE: Italy's FTTH: Molti B... gg 5/25/03 10:07

First Korea, now Italy! Next will be Russia.? The U.S. is falling rapidly behind the rest of the world in broadband, while every time I go to Washington, the wiseguys tell me there is no demand for more bandwidth and no services that require it. Even with our Laocoon local loops (entangled in reptilian regulation), all that fetuccini Milanesi could be served up by Soma, wirelessly, if one of the telco survivors could get their act together, or by Narad, if the cable people could unwind, or unbundle.

--GG

RE: GG : Opinion on ENWV? gg 5/25/03 10:10

My noggin notion is that Endwave will struggle until U.S. carriers begin competing seriously to deliver broadband.? But I will call my friends at the company, who I have not contacted since Telecosm.

--GG

RE: Stocks: Big week next... gg 5/25/03 10:39

This article shows the complete bankruptcy of current economic models.

"The dollar has been on a downward spiral, and worries have mounted over the threat of deflation." Deflation is totally inconsistent with a declining dollar (the definition of inflation is a declining dollar, not a rise in these delusionary price indices).?

Other reports suggest that a "weak dollar" helps U.S. companies, as if the economy were not global. A weak dollar increases the prices of all imported inputs, including capital, and reduces the real value of export income. Moreover, if the dollar dropped 10 percent (I am guessing), the US economy did not grow at all; it shrank sharply, as did the stock market. In a global economy, any nominal growth must be discounted by the drop in the dollar.

The only kind of dollar that helps the US economy is a stable store of value--a dollar that does not change in relation to gold and other unchanging commodities.?A stable dollar promotes long term investment and risk taking.

Consumer confidence surveys are a rear view funhouse mirror demonstrably useless for predicting anything at all. Consumer spending drives not two thirds but less than one third of the total US economy, including business transactions, which last time I looked were economic in nature (though not in funhouse Keynesian models).

Meanwhile the idiots in Washington are talking about the tax cut in terms of its "cost" to the government, when tax rate reductions everywhere always bring more revenues not less. But this "tax cut" actually consisted in some significant part of new government spending on payments to married couples and other rebates and bonanzas of no benefit to the economy since they were not granted in exchange for economic decisions, choices or output.

None the less, the reduction in rates on incomes and capital gains is significant, and offers real promise for a gradually ascendant economy if the trial lawyer leracketeers can be kept under control. The tax cuts signify a rapid recovery in our markets if broadband can somehow escape its regulatory manacles.

If...if...if..but the largest if relates to whether Greenspan and the Administration have the slightest clue about what is going on. If they don't we will have wall to wall democrats raising taxes for the rest of the decade.

Any way, on to the "Crossroads," the book Bret Swanson and I am writing about all these matters.

--GG
posted by James 9:41 AM

Thursday, June 05, 2003

Is Paris Working?

 
Times Online June 05, 2003

An insightful look at the "what's wrong with France" question.
This fellow considers the possible rise of a Margaret Thatcher-like strong leader to rescue them,
as She did in Britain.
Not likely, because, it seems, the French Do Not Like To Work.

Excerpts follow -
==========================

Mon Dieu, Europe is ripe for a Maggie moment
Anatole Kaletsky

...Now I am beginning to wonder, especially after spending much of last month travelling in France.

For behind the empty rhetoric and phoney bonhomie of the Evian summit, something genuinely
important has recently been happening in France. The broad-based public sector strikes that
brought the country to a standstill on May 13 have been followed by dozens of localised skirmishes
over pension reform in the past two weeks. With similar strikes now breaking out in Germany, Italy
and Austria, and with the eurozone economy sinking into its second recession in three years, the shades
of 1970s Britain are hard to ignore.

I realise, of course, that the present wave of public sector strikes in France and other eurozone
countries is most unlikely to turn into a summer of discontent, with rubbish piled high in the streets
and bodies unburied. European politics remain consensual in nature and already the outlines of
compromise are starting to emerge.

In France, the Government will probably persist with its controversial plans to raise marginally
the retirement age for civil servants, but make big concessions to the unions on educational reforms.
In Germany, Herr Schroder will tighten the unemployment benefit system and slightly ease the labour
regulations for small business, but compensate the unions by promising to protect their power and
privileges in the public sector and large firms.

My point is, however, that even if the immediate conflicts are settled (which I am fairly sure they
will be), the economic self-confidence of Europe's ruling elites, and the complacency of
continental voters, are taking some hard knocks.

For what is really at stake in the present wave of industrial conflict is not just the level of
pensions, or even the future solvency of European governments and the survival of the
euro project, at least as defined by the Maastricht treaty, with its misbegotten stability pact.
The real issue is the viability of the Franco-German ideal of a government-regulated,
egalitarian welfare state. Why do such huge questions arise from what looks like a narrow
dispute over pensions? Because the present conflicts are really about the essence of any
economic system: the nature of work.

As a frequent visitor and owner of a property in France, the similarity with Britain in the 1970s
that seems most significant to me is not the propensity to strike, but a related and much more
insidious feature of industrial relations. This is the typical French worker's attitude to work.

I do not mean that French workers are lazy. On the contrary, the French work with extraordinary
efficiency and concentration, certainly in comparison with their British counterparts. The
productivity statistics bear this out, showing that France enjoys the world's highest output per
hour worked. In this sense, the French are harder working and more efficient not only than the
British but also than the Germans, Americans and Japanese.

The trouble is that French labour's enviable productivity coexists with a less attractive
characteristic: the attitude that economic labour is a form of oppression, a tiresome imposition
on personal life and a form of economic exploitation, to be minimised and avoided. This
attitude to work is evidenced politically in the national obsession with early retirement and
the world's shortest working hours. France is the only country in the world to have a 35-hour
week mandated by law.

At a personal level, one notices this aversion to paid labour almost every day: in the
refusal to work on Sundays, holidays or during the two-hour lunch break; in the
obstructive "jobsworth" attitude of many French civil servants and shopkeepers; in the
excessive levels of "labour-saving" automation which have destroyed basic services and
simple pleasures, such as the ability to buy a cup of properly brewed coffee on a French
motorway from a human instead of a Nescafe machine.

These may be just irascible gripes, but I think they illustrate three points of general interest
and real economic importance.

First, French political debate still seems to be based on the premise that paid labour is
inherently a form of capitalist exploitation that alienates the worker from his true humanity.
This Marxist concept, which still suffuses political and economic thinking, not only in France
but in most of continental Europe, presents employment as an essentially adversarial
relationship between capital and labour ? and implies a view of the market economy as a
class battlefield, rather than a mutually beneficial enterprise. This is, of course, in diametric
contrast to the attitude to labour that has always prevailed in America and dominates thinking
in Britain these days.

This impression is confirmed by a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, which showed that
41 per cent of Britons and 44 per cent of Americans describe themselves as "very satisfied"
with their employment, compared with only 24 per cent of the French. The survey also
showed that Britons and Americans were more satisfied with their general lifestyle and far
more optimistic about the future than the French.

Secondly, the negative attitude to labour accounts for many of the economic problems now
facing France and other European countries. Take the pension crisis. The obvious solution
is to extend working lives and discourage early retirement. In America and increasingly in
Britain, older workers are campaigning for the right to continue working. Americans and
Britons see work not only as a source of income, but also as one of the potential pleasures of
life. In France such ideas are anathema.

Or consider even the vaunted French productivity record. To a large extent high productivity
is the consequence of excessive investment in labour-saving machinery, investment which
in many cases is not economically profitable or rational in a country with high unemployment.
It also seems plausible that exceptionally short working hours force the French to work
harder, thereby making their employment more stressful and increasing the demand for
still shorter hours.

Finally, let me return to the comparison with Britain and the winter of discontent. The French
attitude to paid labour - the sanctity of lunch-breaks, the jobsworth insolence, the determination
of employers to avoid hiring whenever possible, the Marxist economic philosophy of exploitation -
are all eerily reminiscent of Britain in the 1970s. However, I suspect that France and the rest of
Europe are nearer the beginning of their decade of economic crisis than to the Thatcherite
denouement.



posted by James 7:17 AM

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Change of Cell number...

 
Bob Wilson changed his cell phone number, and he decided to let his mailing list know about it.
This is the entire email that showed up in my box....

Note- Three lines of text carry the content. The rest is "distribution" and coding information.

Scary.


===========================
)" >,
"Peter Tarca (ptarca@vibrint.com)" , Patrick McLean
, Michael Harris ,
Paul Wilkins , Rob Rizzuto
, Roy Murphy ,
Sally Gray ,
"Stephane Thibault (Stephane
pinnacle@singnet.com.sg
)"
pinnacle@singnet.com.sg
>, "Sudy Shen (sudy@acuratech.com)"
,
"Thomas Malone (aol.com
http://www.elmtreebnb.com/innkeep.htm
X-AOL-IP: 198.37.32.222
)"
keely311>,
"Thomas Malone (aol.com
http://www.elmtreebnb.com/innkeep.htm

)"
keely311>, "Thomas Malone (Business Fax)"
,
"Timothy Prouty (tim@etechintl.com)" , Vince Mock
, "Wendy Boufford (wboufford@wsgr.com)"
, alden@nixonpeabody.com;casbury@Stanford.edu;svhotice@earthlink.net;lmboag@yahoo.com;
MichelineBrown@worldnet.att.net;wbillygin@msn.com;popeye_da_sailor@yahoo.com;pclem3
@aol.com;CrawfordRuth@aol.com;daniel.cressman@grubb-ellis.com;richard_donovan@
Subject: New Cell Number
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 10:55:25 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19)
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary="----_=_NextPart_000_01C32AC2.7A27DA40";
type="multipart/alternative"

This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand
this format, some or all of this message may not be legible.

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boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C32AC2.7A27DA40"


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Content-Type: text/plain

Many apologies for the inconvenience, but my new cell number is 650 678
7359. I realize this change is a pain, but Verizon was much cheaper and
better service than AT&T. Hope all is well with you and yours!



Bob Wilson

Pinnacle Systems, Inc.

650 237 1628

Cell 650 678 7359

bwilson@pinnaclesys.com




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link=blue vlink=purple style='margin-left:18.75pt;margin-top:18.75pt'>

Many apologies for the inconvenience, but
my new cell number is 650 678 7359. I realize this change is a pain, but
Verizon was much cheaper and better service than AT&T. Hope all is well
with you and yours!


 

Bob Wilson


Pinnacle Systems, Inc.


650 237 1628


Cell 650 678 7359


bwilson@pinnaclesys.com

 

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posted by James 1:24 PM