The plan for the new software, whose codename is Channel Z, is for me to burn in the editing tool for the next week while visiting the Bay Area, and if all goes well to start a very small beta group on Monday or Tuesday of the following week (December 1) and then offer it [...]

Brand Emotion. I'm sitting here in Seattle's airport. My flight is delayed. The plane is broken. A new one is getting flown in. But, it gives me some time to think about how people perceive brands and what can affect that perception. Particularly when it comes to Microsoft Now, what do you think when I [...]

Insurance oligopoly at work It's no surprise that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have been instrumental in rewriting the US medical insurance program for seniors, Medicare. With deep pockets and big-league campaign contributions, they had seats at the table when the legislation was drafted, a privilege consumers and their advocates have been denied. That's what [...]

The very model of a modern internet service provider. The ISP Nanny State. I've become interested in the wireless ISP business, partly because I'm tired of the “half-fast” Internet served up by the telcos and cablecos, and partly because the cost/quality ratio of radios has improved to the point that it's plausible to consider establishing [...]

Nation-Building in Iraq: Lessons From the Past. A former envoy to Afghanistan says the Iraqi reconstruction planning is a lesson in how not to go about nation building. By Michael R. Gordon. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

PostgreSQL 7.4 Release Thoughts. I know it's been mentioned all over the place already, but after reading about the PostgreSQL 7.4 release, including the more detailed changes that Bruce published, I'm very impressed. On my TODO list for next year (that's 2004, in case you're not sure) it to play with PostgreSQL a lot more [...]

Blackstone Sneak Peaks. We hosted a “sneak peak” session yesterday afternoon here at MAX, engineers from all the product teams (in bee costumes, don't ask) used the opportunity to showcase cool stuff they were working on (stuff that may, or may not) make it into future products. Mike Nimer presented for the ColdFusion team, and [...]

ColdFusion Powered Flex?. Lots of the impromptu chats I have been having here at MAX have been focused on Flex, and specifically how it relates to ColdFusion. So, no, Flex is not a ColdFusion killer, it is not even a ColdFusion competitor. The truth is that I don't think we've done an adequate job yet [...]

Working with Bayesian categorizers. There's been some discussion in the blog world about using a Bayesian categorizer to enable a person to discriminate along various interest/non-interest axes. I took a run at this recently and, although my experiments haven't been wildly successful, I want to report them because I think the idea may have merit. [...]

Wired News: 'Cyber Sweep' Nets 125 Arrests. The investigation, begun Oct. 1 and dubbed Operation Cyber Sweep, involved police from Ghana to Southern California and uncovered 125,000 victims who had lost more than $100 million, he told a news conference. Seventy indictments to date have led to arrests or convictions of 125 people, with more [...]