Thursday, November, 20th

Take up the executive's burden.

"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands. It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. . . . I mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?"

- Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.)


We're not going to follow the red herring and start barking about executive compensation for the big dogs, but these guys need a good image consultant.


Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

» PermaLink

Wednesday, November, 19th



Houston Street

The information is laughing at us
The ticker tape feeds the night
Looking for a lost transmission
A heaven that we left behind

When the information comes
We'll know what we're made from


- Beck


We put a damper on more than one dinner party conversation a couple of years ago when asked for our opinion on the future of The Economy. These days, of course, it is hard to tune into any media without being bombarded with doomsday information 24/7. Our favorite financial news source continues to be Bloomberg which offers up the stuff that trades are made on.

While news reports focus on the global financial crisis and the U.S. debate on bailing out dinosaurs, we remain bullish on innovation and entrepreneurship.

It's Global Entrepreneurship Week
A series of events promoting entrepreneurship is taking place around the globe this week. Details on Global Entrepreneurship Week are at unleashingideas.org.

» PermaLink

Monday, October, 20th


This year's GOSCON in Portland, Oregon opens with an international panel and videoconference on open source and government.

When: October 20th, 12 - 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Where: via videoconference and live webcast, see details at:

World Bank Live Webcast

Participating countries include Brazil, Ghana, Senegal, Russia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and the United States.

The participants in Ghana include a group of students and

1.Ministries
2.Bank of Ghana
3.Ghana Armed Forces
4.Forestry Commission
5.Ghana Atomic Energy Commission
6.Ghana Civil Aviation
7.Ghana Public Services Commission
8.Ghana Public Enterprises Commission
9.Volta River Authority
10.Parliament House
11.Ghana Fire Service
12. Imigration Service
13.Ghana Customs and Excise
14.Ghana Procurement Authority
15.National Communication Authority
16.Meteorology Department
17.Ministry of Transport, Department of Feeder Roads

» PermaLink

Sunday, September, 28th

Paul Leonard Newman, 1925 - 2008

Just the other day we were reminded of The Sting, a film carried by the rhythm of its actors. We will miss Paul Newman, husband, father, actor, activist, auto racer and generous philanthropist.




Mr. Newman is survived by his wife actress Joanne Woodward and their daughters Susan and Nell; he is also survived by three other daughters, Stephanie, Melissa (Lissy) and Clea; two grandchildren Peter and Henry Elkind; his brother older Arthur; and his sons-in-law: Raphe, Kurt and Gary.

» PermaLink

Wednesday, July, 30th

The government of Portugal will provide 500,000 Intel Classmate PCs to school children under its "Iniciativa Magalhães" (Magellan Initiative) in the next year.







Classmate PC




Intel's Classmate PC, which will soon use their new low-power Atom processor, runs Windows and varients of the GNU/Linux operating system such as Mandriva Linux. Mandriva, formerly Mandrake in France, acquired Brazilian Linux company Conectiva in 2005. Mandriva is also providing a customized version of Linux for the Gdium "netbook" which runs on a USB key.


» PermaLink

Friday, July, 18th





We're reminded of former executives of a now bankrupt film company disagreeing over the color of their new corporate jet's leather seats in reading the piece about comfort capsules for U.S. Air Force Generals.


One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.



Debt certificate issued in 1990 for 14 Percent.



Terminator transport?

» PermaLink

Wednesday, July, 16th

When California's failed IndyMac Bank reopened under the administration of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regulators, customers met with confusion.



» PermaLink

Saturday, July, 12th

The Experts

Everyone thought these guys were the best in the market at evaluating mortgages, so they let them skate by with huge debts and tiny financial cushions. But now it’s less clear they knew what they were doing, and it’s really hard to know who’s right and who’s selling pipe dreams and then hoping for the best.

- Thomas H. Stanton, John Hopkins University

» PermaLink

Monday, May, 26th


White lilacs

Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald bird
We must say goodbye

- Memorial Tribute
Patti Smith









Memorial Day originated in Greece 2,500 years ago when flowers and garlands were laid on the graves of heroes. The custom was adopted in the United States and the Confederacy during the American Civil War.







American flag by
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

» PermaLink

Thursday, May, 15th

Contributions for China Earthquake Relief may be made to MercyCorps, a U.S. non-profit organization partnered with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA). Staff from these organizations are on the ground in Sichaun Province and will be coordinating humanitarian assistance from a temporary office in Chongqing.

MercyCorps, which has been active in China since 2001, will provide clean water, food and shelter to victims of the earthquake. They are also planning a Cash for Work program to provide jobs to local people to help with clean up work.

» PermaLink

Tuesday, April, 22nd

Patriot's Day in Massachusetts means it's time for the Boston Marathon.



Running the last mile of the 2008 Boston Marathon, Ethiopia's Dire Tune inches ahead of Alevtina Biktimirova on Commonwealth Avenue. Tune won by 2 seconds.




Kenya's Robert Cheruiyot, at 25013, was a strong lead. He won his fourth Boston Marathon despite an interruption in his training due to the civil strife in his homeland.

» PermaLink

Tuesday, January, 29th



According to filings with the Oslo Børs, Norway's stock exchange, major Trolltech (TROLL.OL) shareholders have pre-accepted a tender offer by Nokia.

The Deal
Trolltech CEO and co-founder Haavard Nord (7,250,120 shares), board member Eirik Chambe-Eng through his Vuonislahti Invest AS (7,188,120 shares), Teknoinvest and funds managed by Index Ventures, (9,693,018 shares) have agreed to tender their shares. An aside: Index Ventures is also a shareholder in MySQL which is being acquired by Sun for 1 billion USD.

Lars Knoll, VP of Engineering (75,200 shares) and Volker Hilsheimer, employee representative on the board of Trolltech, (56,500 shares) have also pre-accepted Nokia's offer.

According to Thompson Financial, Nokia's cash bid of 16 Norwegian Kroner per share values Trolletech at around 843 million Norwegian Kroner, or 105 million Euro, and represents a premium of 6 NKR per share to Trolltech's closing price in Oslo on Friday. TROLL closed Friday's regular trade at $35.08, down $1.4, on a volume of 31.28 million shares. It's shares were up 57% on Monday after the announcement. The company operated at a loss in 2006 and 2007.

Some Background
Looking beyond the Symbian and Windows CE mobile operating systems, Nokia was first attracted to Linux desktop GNOME's GTK+ library, in part because its rival desktop KDE library Qt was maintained by a sole company, Trolltech, rather than a distributed group. GNOME's origin ten years ago was as a freely licensed alternative to KDE. This distinction helped founder Miguel de Icaza attract a sizeable and energetic young base of developers.

After heated discussion in the developer community, Trolltech eventually released its Qt toolkit under the GPL 2, dual licensing the code in 2000 and removing most of the license distinction which GNOME held. Recently, Trolltech announced that its Qt cross-platform development framework was now licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL v3.)

Quick Analysis
Nokia's strategy to broaden its revenue model to services such as Ovi, makes cross platform delivery and developer mindshare a key dependency to its future. With Trolltech's Ot in hand (and on its line of mobile handsets) together with GTK+ based Maemo on its Linux Internet WiFi tablets,) the former rubber boot manufacturer musters a new challenge to other players in the wireless and WiMax market. Simultaneously, the company strenghtens its corporate leadership role in open source technology.

Dean Bubley writes in his Disruptive Wireless blog:

This isn't a battle for the smartphone space, but featurephones.



» PermaLink

 

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