Friday, August 04, 2006
Goliath, Unmasked
Saul Singer has a great piece in today’s Jerusalem Post. It’s about time to start seeing optimistic pieces explaining the obvious:
The war to destroy Israel has always been a war against the West. Since 9/11, it has become even clearer that the Islamist tolerance of non-Islamist power anywhere is no greater than its tolerance of a Jewish state. But now that Iran’s proxy army has attacked Israel and we are busy destroying that army, it is impossible to deny that two jihads are actually one.
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Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Back to the Airwaves
This time, in Sacramento. If you’re in California’s Central Valley tomorrow at 2, tune in to Insight, on Capital Public Radio KXJZ at 2PM, where I’ll be part of a panel discussing digital copyright issues.
Or, at any time after the program, just tune in here. There should be something for you to stream.
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Tuesday, July 25, 2006
As if on Cue. . .
Edward Luttwak’s suggestion in this morning’s WSJ that we turn Lebanon back over to Syria’s Bashar Assad represents “realist” cynicism at its very worst. Realists view every crisis as a fire to be extinguished, a threat to a manageable if uncomfortable status quo. While this characterization is undoubtedly correct at times, most crises erupt for a reason. Restoration of the status quo leaves the underlying reasons unresolved—and invariably sets the stage for greater crises down the road.
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Friday, July 21, 2006
Reality Trumps Realism (finally)
American foreign policy has long been saddled with a misnamed theory known as “Realism.” Though is certainly sounds good—after all, who among us would oppose a realistic approach to any of our policies?—its basic precepts have long run counter to America’s national interests. To put the matter succinctly, Realists view the world as an essentially immutable place beset by occasional crises. The goal of American foreign policy should therefore be to resolve the crisis and to restore the status quo ante. Some of our allegedly finest “statesmen” have espoused variants of this approach (think Eisenhower, Kissinger, Papa Bush, James Baker, Brzezinski, Scowcroft). All have devised foreign policies disastrous for the U.S. and for the world.
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Thursday, July 13, 2006
The EU Fines Microsoft
I figured that as long as I’m in the EU, I should probably share a few thoughts about the EU’s decision to levvy a €280.5m fine against Microsoft. So here’s a quick thought.
The European case against Microsoft stems from business practices similar to those that had been at stake in the U.S. case, but relating to different (and later) products. While the U.S. case was concerned mostly with web browsers in Windows 95, the Europeans have looked at media players, servers, and other interactions between later versions of Windows and other software. The specifics behind this week’s fine, though, deal with remedy orders and compliance. They also raise a number of issues likely to be with those of us who follow technology businesses for quite some time. Over the years, the EU has ordered Microsoft to license some of its products to its competitors. The problem with software licenses, though, is that without suitable documentation and training, software is tough for even qualified professionals to understand. So the EU has also ordered Microsoft to spend time and money developing manuals detailed enough to make its licenses meaningful. Therein lies the heart of the problem. The patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secret protections that we give to software providers gives them enormous flexibility in leveraging their products to disadvantage competitors--more flexibility, in fact, than manufacturers have in ANY OTHER industry. Microsoft has used this flexibility to great effect. Antitrust enforcers on two continents have tried to use antitrust law to counter this grant of powerful intellectual property rights. No matter how hard they try, though, they seem to discover that it just doesn’t work. Antitrust is an after-the-fact fix. As long as we give software companies extraordinarily powerful intellectual property rights, we empower them to alter the competitive landscape of their industry. (Though Microsoft works in the high profile consumer software markets, there have been reports of smaller companies behaving comparably in in smaller niche markets). Antitrust remedies can’t really fix this problem; at best, they can make life a smidgen more difficult for violators. The underlying problem is inherent in the system. I discussed many of these issues in detail in Digital Phoenix.
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Monday, July 03, 2006
The Technical Chamber of Greece
I’m in Athens today, courtesy of the Technical Chamber of Greece. They’re hosting a conference on the knowledge economy, and they have kindly invited me to give the keynote address. Because this invitation came, in part, because of Digital Phoenix, and because my hosts asked me to discuss the past 10-15 years of the global knowledge economy and the lessons that Greece should learn from it, I chose the title “Phoenix Rising over the Aegean? Economic Lessons of the Early Information Age.” I also promised the attendees that I would make copies of both my prepared remarks and my PowerPoint slides available on The Informationist. If they’re not here yet, they will be soon.
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Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Special Thanks to Senators Bennett, Lieberman & McConnell
The U.S. Senate has been posturing a lot lately. Last week we saw two disgraceful attempts by leading Democrats to prove that though they may not have any alternative anti-terror strategy, they are prepared to abandon the poorly-executed one currently underway. There are only two good things to say about these motions: both went down to defeat, and neither one would have had much of a bearing on reality anyway.
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Friday, June 09, 2006
So Google’s Launching a Spreadsheet
One of the questions that people still ask about the Microsoft trial is who Microsoft hurt. In Digital Phoenix, I explained that the real harm in Microsoft’s actions was that it delayed and deterred the development of new software.
I described the “real” reason that Microsoft feared Netscape was that Navigator promised to create a net-centered route between people and their microchips. Microsoft already owned the office-centered route, and feared that an alternate route would not only erode its power, but could threaten its supremacy of the office desktop.
After all, Microsoft’s success at office applications meant that anyone interested in designing a word processor or a spreadsheet would have to work on something other than Windows. But where to work? Navigator, particularly in conjunction with Java, presented a possible answer. So Microsoft squelched it.
Now, more than a decade later, it appears that Google’s initiative coupled with the antitrust enforcers’ increased scrutiny, is finally exploring the potential of an office-centered front end to that net-centered route. Will it work? It’s too early to say. But for those of us paying attention, we can only wonder: Why couldn’t we have tried it ten years ago?
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