*michael parekh on IT*

ON CAR BUSINESS AS USUAL

NO CHANGE

At first glance it was a bit startling to see the President of the United States, accompanied by his auto industry task force, holding a press conference to announce that a private sector company, Chrysler, will be imminently filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.  As the New York Times reports:

"Chrysler, the third-largest American auto company, will seek bankruptcy protection and enter an alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, the White House announced Thursday.

The bankruptcy case, which officials envisioned as a swift, “surgical” process, was filed in United States Bankruptcy Court in New York. It marks the first time a major American car company has tried to restructure under bankruptcy protection since Studebaker in 1933.

“I have every confidence that Chrysler will emerge from this process stronger and more competitive,” President Obama said during a noontime appearance at the White House."

But on further reflection, it shouldn't be surprising that the leader of the free world should be involved in such a way over the restructuring of a private sector company.  As Jenkins Holman Jr. explained in his WSJ op-ed titled "The Truth about Cars and Trucks" yesterday,

"For three decades, the Big Three were able to survive precisely because they skimped on quality and features in the money-losing sedans they were required under Congress's fuel economy rules to build in high-cost UAW factories. In return, Washington compensated them with the hothouse, politically protected opportunity to profit from pickups and SUVs.

Doesn't sound much like what you hear incessantly from your Congressman, about how Detroit's problems are all due to management "incompetence" in deciding to build "gas guzzling" SUVs, does it?"

And despite the current seemingly Herculean efforts by the government, the prognosis isn't much better going forward, as Mr. Holman goes on to explain:

"Yet the muddled, covert bailout continues: Washington's latest fuel-economy rules actually reward manufacturers for increasing the size and weight of some vehicles. The truck tariff remains in place. The fuel-mileage rules continue to protect the UAW monopoly by discouraging the Big Three from shipping small-car production offshore.

In a real bankruptcy, which is the natural fate of companies unable to meet their obligations, Chrysler and GM would be run (or liquidated) for the benefit of their creditors, not their workers. But, here, "pattern bargaining" will remain the law of the Detroit jungle. The UAW will continue to use its unnaturally augmented clout to extract uncompetitive pay and benefits (it can do no other given its internal incentives).

As it has for 40 years, Washington will pitch in with one improvisation after another, disguised as energy policy, trade policy, health-care policy or environmental policy, to stop the rivets from popping off. Politics, especially Democratic electoral politics, will play a more dominant role than ever."

Read the whole piece, and one gets the distinct sense that all this is not just business as usual, but bigger than ever.  Maybe one day, it'll be different.  But not today.

ON ANOTHER SIDE OF DUBAI

STRETCHING LIMITS

The Independent has a long but sobering piece on the reality of Dubai titled "The Dark Side of Dubai", covering both the recent boom and the current bust.  Some searing excerpts:

"Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history..."
"...There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look..."
"I approach a blonde 17-year-old Dutch girl wandering around in hotpants, oblivious to the swarms of men gaping at her. "I love it here!" she says. "The heat, the malls, the beach!" Does it ever bother you that it's a slave society? She puts her head down, just as Sohinal did. "I try not to see," she says. Even at 17, she has learned not to look, and not to ask; that, she senses, is a transgression too far..."
"...Dubai is not just a city living beyond its financial means; it is living beyond its ecological means. You stand on a manicured Dubai lawn and watch the sprinklers spray water all around you. You see tourists flocking to swim with dolphins. You wander into a mountain-sized freezer where they have built a ski slope with real snow. And a voice at the back of your head squeaks: this is the desert. This is the most water-stressed place on the planet. How can this be happening? How is it possible?

"...Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates' water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It's the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American..."

"...Dubai had expanded so fast its sewage treatment facilities couldn't keep up. The sewage disposal trucks had to queue for three or four days at the treatment plants – so instead, they were simply drilling open the manholes and dumping the untreated sewage down them, so it flowed straight to the sea."

The whole piece is worth reading, along with the many vocal comments from many residents who take issue with many aspects of the article.

ON THE NO. 2 CONTRIBUTOR TO GLOBAL WARMING

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

The New York Times has a piece reminding us that developing nations also have significant contributions to make when it comes to dealing with global climate change.  It's not just on the shoulders of developed nations. 

The piece takes us thousands of miles away to India, visiting a village with barely any electricity or emission spewing automobiles:

"As women in ragged saris of a thousand hues bake bread and stew lentils in the early evening over fires fueled by twigs and dung, children cough from the dense smoke that fills their homes. Black grime coats the undersides of thatched roofs. At dawn, a brown cloud stretches over the landscape like a diaphanous dirty blanket.

In Kohlua, in central India, with no cars and little electricity, emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming, are near zero. But soot — also known as black carbon — from tens of thousands of villages like this one in developing countries is emerging as a major and previously unappreciated source of global climate change.

While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies estimating that it is responsible for 18 percent of the planet’s warming, compared with 40 percent for carbon dioxide. Decreasing black carbon emissions would be a relatively cheap way to significantly rein in global warming — especially in the short term, climate experts say. Replacing primitive cooking stoves with modern versions that emit far less soot could provide a much-needed stopgap, while nations struggle with the more difficult task of enacting programs and developing technologies to curb carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

In fact, reducing black carbon is one of a number of relatively quick and simple climate fixes using existing technologies — often called “low hanging fruit” — that scientists say should be plucked immediately to avert the worst projected consequences of global warming."

What's surprising about all this is the next bit:

"But the awareness of black carbon’s role in climate change has come so recently that it was not even mentioned as a warming agent in the 2007 summary report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that pronounced the evidence for global warming to be “unequivocal.” Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of environmental engineering at Stanford, said that the fact that black carbon was not included in international climate efforts was “bizarre,” but “partly reflects how new the idea is.” The United Nations is trying to figure out how to include black carbon in climate change programs, as is the federal government."

The piece is worth reading in it's entirety, if only to understand better what the whole global village can and must do to deal with this problem together.

ON RAMPING UP RAIL

BACK TO THE FUTURE

America may get serious about high-speed rail again, given the perfect storm of events that now seem ready to propel a spate of rail investments around the country.  As the Wall Street Journal reports:

"President Barack Obama on Thursday called for spending at least $13 billion to launch a "new era" of high-speed passenger rail transportation, sparking competition among states and providing a potentially rich new market for rail equipment makers.

Besides allocating $8 billion in stimulus funds for high-speed rail, Mr. Obama said he would seek to budget $5 billion more over the next five years.

Sounding an ambitious theme akin to President Dwight Eisenhower's push for the interstate highway system, Mr. Obama spoke of "a new system of high-speed rail in America" that "will be faster, cheaper and easier than building more freeways or adding to an already overburdened aviation system." The interstate system contributed to the growth of the U.S. auto industry in the 1950s and, along with cheaper air travel, consigned passenger rail to third-class status in the U.S. transportation system."

So far so good, but that's the analogy only goes so far.  The highway system of course was far more extensive than the proposed rail systems.  Even the goal of emulating the high-speed rail systems in Europe will require far greater investment, as the article goes on to highlight:

"Building a high-speed rail network like the one in Western Europe would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but Mr. Obama called the $13 billion effort "a first step."

And it'll take a few years to get rolling.  Hope they don't forget to equip the trains with broadband wireless.

ON COSTA RICA'S ECO-ECONOMICS

HAVING IT ALL

Talk show host Chris Matthews has a regular section on his show where he asks the panelists of the day "Tell me something I don't know".  That question came to mind for me, as I read Thomas Friedman's latest op-ed on how Costa Rica is apparently balancing the conflicting demands of environmentalism and economic growth.  He elaborates:

"More than any nation I’ve ever visited, Costa Rica is insisting that economic growth and environmentalism work together. It has created a holistic strategy to think about growth, one that demands that everything gets counted..."

Admirable goal, something along the lines of wishing one could eat all the cheese-burgers one wants and lose weight.  But here's where he delivers something I didn't know:

"The process began in the 1990s when Costa Rica, which sits at the intersection of two continents and two oceans, came to fully appreciate its incredible bounty of biodiversity — and that its economic future lay in protecting it. So it did something no country has ever done: It put energy, environment, mines and water all under one minister.

“In Costa Rica, the minister of environment sets the policy for energy, mines, water and natural resources,” explained Carlos M. Rodríguez, who served in that post from 2002 to 2006. In most countries, he noted, “ministers of environment are marginalized.” They are viewed as people who try to lock things away, not as people who create value. Their job is to fight energy ministers who just want to drill for cheap oil.

But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez..."

Certainly an out-of-the box solution, and apparently has been executed on for a while now, as the piece goes on to explain .  Definitely something worth knowing at first glance.
*Image source.

ON COBOL'S 50th BIRTHDAY

KEEPS ON GOING

This piece in the Guardian notes the 50th anniversary of a computer language that still runs much of our business software around the world.  The language of course, is "Cobol", aka

"The "common business-oriented language" that has provided 59-year-old Stuart with a career through to retirement age marks its 50th birthday this year. The day to celebrate is slippery - Cobol didn't just scroll on to a terminal one day and ask the user to hit "Compile" - but 1959 is the year that the language came into being.

And Cobol is still in business. According to David Stephenson, the UK manager for the software provider Micro Focus, "some 70% to 80% of UK plc business transactions are still based on Cobol."

The piece goes on to give a typical use case:

"Mike Madden, development service manager with the catalogue-shopping firm JD Williams, believes so.

Better known for its online stores, such as Simply Be and Fifty Plus, Madden says JD Williams remains highly dependent on Cobol applications. "We have a huge commitment to Cobol," he says. "About 50% of our mainframe systems use it."

Why? "Simple - we haven't found anything faster than Cobol for batch-processing," Madden says. "We use other languages, such as Java, for customer-facing websites, but Cobol is for order processing. The code matches business logic, unlike other languages."

Matching underwear

So, knicker-buying Simply Be customers are greeted by a pretty-in-pink Java interface, but when the order reaches the backroom, charcoal-grey Cobol code takes over the processing grunt work."

The piece goes on to describe how Cobol has continued to thrive behind the scenes, even after the notoriety it received in the public eye around the millennium bug brouhaha almost a decade ago.

Recommended read for geeks everywhere, especially if you had some instruction in the language so very long ago.

ON A FOCUS ON ASIA

NEW BEGINNINGS

The Economist introduces a new column on Asia this week in an article titled "In the Shade of the Banyan Tree", with this background:

"SOME 165 years, 161 years and 114 years since its correspondents first filed reports respectively from Calcutta, Shanghai and Yokohama, The Economist this week launches a column on Asian affairs. We have taken a while, but is this not, after all, to be the Asian century? We think probably so..."

"the search for an Asian identity is growing. It forms the backdrop to the annual East Asia Summit, held this year in Thailand from April 10th, grouping the ten South-East Asian countries with not just their partners in China, Japan and South Korea but India, Australia and New Zealand as well. The powerful impulse for co-operation is materialism based on rapid economic development..."

Looks like the Economist will have a lot of material to work with for the new column.

Why the Banyan Tree? The piece goes on to explain:

"A dearth of pan-Asian images speaks volumes, but the banyan tree serves better than most, for it or similar trees are found somewhere in most Asian countries. The banyan spans Asia’s spirituality and its entrepreneurialism. The Bodhi tree, under which Buddha attained enlightenment, was a banyan by another name. Gujarati merchants conducted business under it, and the Portuguese lent their name, banyan, to the tree. It stuck."

"...An ancient connection exists between public business and the banyan tree, as between its huge overarching shade and its deep intertwining roots. In South-East Asia, and Java in particular, the shade was a place of learning and a site where rulers vowed justice. Those are Asian values to which Banyan will happily subscribe." 

As an Indian born kid, I remember going through a phase of sketching one Banyan tree after another.

So it seems appropriate as a title for this new experiment.  Here's to reading much more about Asia underneath this Banyan Tree.

ON HIGH NOON FOR HIGHER EDUCATION

HEAD WINDS

The Wall Street Journal reports on yet another thing we need to worry about in the medium to long-term:

"The number of Chinese and Middle Eastern students applying for fall admission to U.S. graduate programs surged, while applications from India and South Korea fell, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools.

The council, which represents more than 500 higher-education institutions in the U.S. and Canada, said foreigners' applications for 2009 graduate-school admissions rose 4% from the year before. That compares with increases of 6% in 2008, 9% in 2007 and 12% in 2006. Foreigners' applications to doctoral programs rose 5%, but declined 17% for master's degrees."

Reasons for these trends include:

"The mixed results point to a meeting of new realities in the global economy: On the one hand, some countries have improved their educational systems to keep students closer to home or woo those from other countries who might have otherwise chosen the U.S. On the other, the global recession -- and some signs of resistance to employing immigrants in the U.S. -- means U.S. tuitions are increasingly out of reach for some, while others fear jobs won't be waiting for them upon graduation."

Why should we worry about this?

"Historically, U.S. graduate schools were the graduate schools for the world," said council president Debra W. Stewart. "Now, we cannot simply assume it's going to be a matter of turning on the spigot and the most talented people in the world will flow in." She and others in higher education say it is too soon to know the true effects of the financial crisis on higher education until enrollment numbers are available..."

"Other countries, such as the U.K., Australia and Canada, have enacted policies that make it easier for students to go from the classroom to the workplace without reapplying for a visa, said Ursula Oaks, a spokeswoman for the Association of International Educators. Meanwhile, amid a high unemployment rate, some U.S. government agencies and recent legislation are discouraging recruitment of foreign workers."

Just like the U.S. reigned supreme globally  in automobiles a few decades ago, we currently do the same in higher education.  But given the secular demographic and economic changes globally, we're going to actually have to compete in this arena going forward. 

Our politicians really need to understand the long-term implications and importance of these trends for our economic well-being.

* Image source.

ON MONSTROUS CHUTZPAH

STRETCHING IT

I've been a customer and fan of Monster Cable products since the 1980s, and so this article by the Wall Street Journal titled "The scariest Monster of  all sues for trademark infringement"  caught my attention:

"When Christina and Patrick Vitagliano dreamed up their Monster Mini Golf franchises -- 18-hole, indoor putting greens straddled by glow-in-the-dark statues of ghouls and gargoyles -- they never imagined that a California maker of high-end audio cables would object.

But Monster Cable Products Inc., which holds more than 70 trademarks on the word monster, challenged the Vitaglianos' trademark applications. It filed a federal lawsuit against their company in California and demanded the Rhode Island couple surrender the name and pay at least $80,000 for the right to use it."

The piece goes on to add:

"Over the years, it has gone after purveyors of monster-branded auto transmissions, slot machines, glue, carpet-cleaning machines and an energy drink, as well as a woman who sells "Junk Food Monster" kids' T-shirts that promote good eating habits.

It sued Monster.com over the job-hunting Web site's name and Walt Disney Co. over products tied to the film "Monsters Inc." It opposed the Boston Red Sox trademark applications for seats and hot dogs named for the Green Monster, the legendary left-field wall in Fenway Park. All in all, Monster Cable says it has fought about 190 monster battles at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and filed around 30 monster lawsuits in federal courts."

The company founder and CEO, Noel Lee, who founded the company in 1979 and carries the title "Head Monster", has been aggressive on this front to say the least:

"To a legal novice, it may seem odd that a common word like monster can be trademarked at all. But in the complex and sometimes murky world of trademark law, common words can be registered, provided they are associated with specific classes of goods. Apple Inc., for example, holds trademarks for the word apple when it's related to computer products, not fruit.

Sometimes, trademarks can obtain a higher order of protection, known as "famous marks." This category is supposed to be reserved for words that have become so entwined with a product and a company -- like the word visa and Visa Inc.'s credit card -- that the trademark owner can argue that no other product may use the word in its name.

David Tognotti, Monster Cable's general manager and an attorney, says the company considers "Monster" a famous mark -- on a par with Barbie dolls or Camel cigarettes. "We're protecting our mark as if it's a famous mark," he said in an interview in Monster Cable's headquarters, where the walls are lined with framed copies of the company's trademarks and patents.

Mr. Tognotti cited a chapter on famous marks in the law book "McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition" by J. Thomas McCarthy, a noted expert in the field.

But in an interview, Prof. McCarthy expressed doubt that Monster Cable possesses a famous mark. He said such determinations are made by courts. Mr. Tognotti acknowledges Monster Cable hasn't obtained such a court ruling."

It's perfectly reasonable for businesses to be aggressive about protecting their assets and business interests.  But this one seems to step over the line a tad, as this one piece of many found on the web indicate.  It might even be considered "Evil" by some estimates. 

Know this won't mean anything to a company with half a billion in revenues but I think I'm holding off buying Monster Cable products for now.

* Image source.

ON SAFE NUKES AROUND THE WORLD

THINK REALLY DIFFERENT

For a minute I thought it was a belated April Fool's headline and so re-read it to make sure:

"Oil-Rich Arab State Push Nuclear Bid with U.S. Help"

But it's a real story, and goes on to explain:

"The mating of the words "nuclear" and "Persian Gulf" normally sets off alarm bells in Washington. Yet this oil-rich Arab state just across the gulf from Iran is on a crash course to develop nuclear power with U.S. backing. Dozens of American engineers, lawyers and businessmen have converged on Abu Dhabi in recent months to help the United Arab Emirates get the Arab world's first nuclear-power program running by 2017."

It's part of a larger initiative to promote "safer" nuclear proliferation around the world..."

"The U.A.E.'s push represents a test for nuclear-power advocates who want countries across the globe to go nuclear -- so long as they play by the rules. The U.S. and United Nations officials are championing the U.A.E. as a role model for other developing countries and as a counterexample to Iran..."

"...To build support, the U.A.E. is agreeing to buy approved nuclear fuel on the international market, rather than enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium, both of which can be made into weapons-grade material. It will also open its facilities to random international inspections."

"...Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently announced their desire to develop nuclear-power programs with U.S. assistance.

Western and Asian companies are already salivating at the chance for lucrative contracts with the U.A.E., which has set the end of April as the rough deadline for bids. General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Co. are among the U.S. firms interested in the initial $20 billion in reactor work, say officials familiar with the bidding process. GE and Westinghouse declined to comment."

It could be a win-win approach that could be a terrific model to use around the world if it works.  But we sure picked a non-intuitive place to start.