Friday, January 20, 2006

A Soldier, Not a Spy

Here's a great op-ed piece from my friend Grant Doty, published recently in The Washington Post. Grant is an officer in the United States Army who not long ago returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. He has some thoughts on the current US administration's policy on domestic surveillance...

What's French for Google?

I don't know Jim Warren of The Hague, but his letter to the editor in today's International Herald Tribune is priceless:

The Google challenge

The article "Europeans weigh plan for search engine" (Jan. 18) provides a very interesting comparison of cultures and economies. In the United States, two motivated young guys with a vision start a company from scratch, hire a bunch of smart people who aren't afraid to innovate and work long hours, and in relatively short order build a massive company. Google is now not only one of the world's most successful and valuable companies, but it is also profoundly changing the way we use the Internet.

In Europe, two governments announce a billion-euro tax-funded program to develop a government-subsidized research center that will hire a bunch of smart people who will work 35 hours per week with guaranteed pensions and who will labor under a dozen layers of management to ultimately deliver, many years from now, a more complicated and unwieldy version of what Google is already doing today.

Anyone who still can't understand why there's a large - and growing - competitive imbalance between "Old Europe" and the rest of the world need look no further than this to see the problem.

Jim Warren, The Hague

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

What Happens in Vegas...

My most recent article for TCSDaily (the website formerly known as TechCentralStation) is on the huge Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas... You'll find it here.