Category: Personal

Digital physics – Wolfram, just the most public of the new paradigmists: What’s So New in a Newfangled Science?

Well me. No team going out with zero goals in the first round makes me happier than France. But still, haven’t they heard of the guillotine? Calude Simonet, president of the French Soccer Federation, commenting on coach Roger Lamerre’s chances of staying on: “Cutting off heads is not the way we do things.”

Picking up on a post I made here earlier this week, NetworkWorld Fusion’s Compendium weblog quoted and linked me in Novell’s purchase of Silverstream a mistake?. Thanks Adam!

The boys in Bristol screwed me over last night, switching coverage of the Denmark-England game from ESPN to ESPN2. So Tivo recorded a couple of hours of SportsCenter. Instead of an exciting 3-0 win for England featuring goals from both the Liverpool strikers, Owen and Heskey. Dayum!

You know, between the taskmaster and the boys kicking balls, there just hasn’t been much time for movies lately. But I want to tell you, even if your busier than me, you need to make time to get out of the house and down to the cinema to see The Bourne Identity. There’s a simple reason: it’s an excellent movie, maybe the best big money film of the year so far.

Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne (well, he’s sort of Jason Bourne, we never do really know) and Franka Potente (Run Lola Run) plays Marie, the $20,000 taxi driver while Chris Cooper, with all of Texas in his mouth, leads the hunt for them. All three really act, which is not particularly something you look for in a straight action movie, and they don’t use a lot of computer effects or wire-aided martial gymnastics as crutches.

Julia Stiles, apparently glad to have a role where she’s not playing a high school hottie, plays a CIA agent running an illegal Paris office; she doesn’t even get to look that hot and in the one scene where we see her full on, she looks sort of hippy. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who played Simon Adebisi on Oz, shows up as a deposed African dictator trying to blackmail the bad CIA people into putting him back in office. Walt Goggins from this season’s surprise hit, The Shield, plays a CIA desk jockey. Clive Owens (The Croupier), a fellow member/victim of an experimental CIA drug-enhanced warrior program gone bad, tries to take down Damon but in the end just isn’t good enough.

One reason for the good result is that it comes from a strong source: a great novel by Robert Ludlam, who also exec produces or at least gets a credit for that. Scriptwriter Tony Gilroy has a great pedigree–Bait, Armageddon, The Devil’s Advocate, and Extreme Measures–but doesn’t really need to add much here. Director Doug Liman is the man, showing surprisingly good form in his first big action flick; you wouldn’t think Go and Swingers would have prepared him for this. But he crunches Damon and Potenta through car chases, assaults, and traps, twisting them time after time, until finally Damon can turn the tables on Cooper. Limon often uses Damon’s face full of confusion, guarded yet confident, to fill the screen. Good job!

Highly Recommended

That’s not me talking, it’s a female doctor in Pakistan quoted by Nicholas Kristoff in August 1914 in Pakistan (NY Times: mefi, mefi) but it sure scares the hell out of me. More:

“The Indian Air Force and the Army are raring to have a go, and only political authority is holding them back,” said Sumit Ganguly, an Indian author.

“Hamid Gul, a rabble-rousing former lieutenant general and head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, says that the moment India strikes, Pakistan will call for a jihad against India and invite Muslims from all over the world to sneak into India and wage attacks. He added that Pakistan would also support separatist movements around India and might even bomb India’s high-tech centers. “If India attacks,” said General Gul, “then it’s `Come one, come all, it’s Jihad!’

“Hamid Nasir Chattha, a prominent politician, noted in a newspaper essay yesterday that Pakistan had spent a fortune acquiring a nuclear capability and suggested that as a result it would be almost a shame not to use it: “If the use of nuclear is unavoidable for the survival of Pakistan, then it must be used with no hesitation.”

“A survey of Pakistani elites published in a recent book, “Pakistan and the Bomb,” found that 98 percent believed that Pakistan would be justified in using nuclear weapons ‘if India were about to attack Pakistan across the international border.'”

“The U.S. Naval War College held an India-Pakistan war game not long ago in which each country’s leaders were played by officials from that country. The games began with a terrorist attack, grew into a border war–and then Pakistan covered its retreat by firing four nuclear weapons at pursuing Indian troops. India responded with 12 nuclear warheads. The U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency estimated that the result would have been 15 million casualties.”

Okay, I’ve basically quoted the entire article but I hope you’re getting the deadly point.

Not Uncle, but Walton: Wal-mart is going to start selling cheap PCs ($300-600) with Lindows, NOT Windows, pre-installed. I think this is a very cool development, because who but retailing behemoth Wal-mart could stand up to MS? My buddy Evan, though, says: “Talk about buying a pig in a poke! Only people who know what they are doing can afford to risk this kind’a system and I think most of them would rather roll their own. In the end I expect there to be a lot of unhappy dumb Walmart customers.”

Thanks to the boys in red and white and their 1 – 0 tossing of Portugal, the American team will go through to the Round of 16 even after a terrible 1-3 result against Poland. The thing is, this match was almost as bad as Italy-Croatia in terms of the referee, who disallowed a Landon Donovan goal in the fourth minute that would have tied things 1-1. Donovan allegedly fouled the defender just before his shot and this was just a complete load of hooey, there is no way that was a legitimate call. Not only did the crap call leave Poland ahead, they were able to counterattack while the Americans were still fuzzy and put a second ball in the net. The third Polish goal, much later in the game in the 65th minute, who knows about that. But 1-1 instead of 2-0 after five minutes, that’s a completely different game to play in.

I can’t blame American goalie Brad Friedel, though, as only the third goal can be marked against him and he made several other brilliant saves. No, the big black mark has to go against defender Jeff Agoos for the first two goals. Agoos went off on an ankle injury in the the 35th minute but coach Bruce Arena stuck with the man who had delivered so much for him (four NCAA titles together at the University of Virginia, then two MLS championships with DC United) far too long and we were reduced to nail-biting until the results came in from the South Korean match when there was about two and a half minutes of stoppage time left in our game. Thankfully the Portugese did themselves in with a red card and then a second player sent off with two yellows in the game.

Next up for the US: the undefeated Mexicans in three days. We have a good past history against the southern neighbors but minus defender Frankie Hejduk, who will be unable to play after picking up his second yellow card of the round, I am not at all confident. Will Arena hide behind the Hejduk absence to stick with Agoos? What the hell:

Go USA!!!

Only One Week – with me on the team and Fortune Magazine says Pyra is the Cool (Media) Company of 2002 [via Steve]

After playing almost the entire game as if they were scared to get near the Mexican goal, Italy got an amazing bit of luck from substitute striker Alessandro Del Piero with a late header AND a surprise victory by Ecuador over Croatia to squeak through to the next round. Mexico played an excellent game, lots of ball control and defense, pushing forward with confidence. They only needed a draw to advance and after taking the 1-0 lead in the first half there was really little doubt about that.

Interestingly, ESPN used Giorgio Chinaglia as the commentator on this match and I thought he was a good choice. He did not favor his old side and was even more critical of them than the Mexicans. Of course, the Italian team was deserving of the criticism. I don’t know what was wrong with Totti today but he was bad and should have come out much earlier for del Piero than he did. Then there was the questionable decision of Trapattoni, the Italian coach, to play Maldini and Panucci deep in the defense and on the opposite side of the field from their normal placement.

Props to the Mexican team with a very pretty header from Jared Borgetti in the 34th minute, going away from and with his back to the goal, and solid midfield work. They win the group and will face the runnerup from Group D in the next round, either the US, South Korea, or Portugal. Italy will face the Group D winner. The final games for the group, America-Poland and Portugal-South Korea, are early tomorrow morning and I can hardly wait!

Argentina’s smoking gun – take a look at this photo and decide for yourself

Just in case you’re looking for a full time WC blog, check out World Cup Blog to Follow the Action, the boys there are doing a fine job. I myself am essentially amazed that France is going home having scored no goals after being THE number one favorite to win the whole thing and that the Argentines are off as well after netting only two balls. Will Portugal join them on the sidelines? What about Italy? They pretty much must defeat Mexico to advance, but our Soouthern neighbors seem to have woken from the slumber this month. And of course, our own boys in red, white, and blue need only a tie against Poland to advance.

It’s a paradox: One of the problems with moving back to Philly – in which Karl finds that quite often, when buying a home, up is down but more is definitely not necessarily less.

Swimming after work with a beer and a buddy is a nice way to end the work day. As long as I have to work.

What if we want what’s under? – Angelina Jolie Offers Shirt for UN Refugee Auction

Yesterday was not a good day to be a New York Yankee and have the last name of Rivera. Ace reliever Mariano Rivera went on the disabled list for only the second time in his major league career with a strained right groin. The other Rivera, outfielder Juan, landed on the DL with what seems like a more serious problem, a fractured right kneecap. The Yankee machine just rolled right on by defeating the Diamondbacks and Randy Johnson with a late home run. The home run came from Marcus Thames playing in his first game up from the minors as Juan’s replacement, one of three HRs the Yanks had in the game. giving them over 100 already this season.

Something new to like – Keith Devens’ new PHP XML-RPC Client/Server

Damn! I’m just finishing up my third day of working for Ev and the Pyra crew handling some customer service issue and let me say I had pretty much completely forgotten how much of a PITA work actually is. And I get to work from home for this job. Then again, I powered through over 500 emails in the Pyra Inbox and hopefully helped a bunch of my fellow Bloggers. Tomorrow I attack the help system! Woohoo!

Shocking development in DC – Politicians: Enthusiasm Ebbs for Tough Reform in Wake of Enron

Some years ago, before the web was the be all and end all, there was a struggling database software company named Sybase, which was struggling with a single digit market share against Oracle and IBM. There was also a very popular corporate application development tool named PowerBuilder, from a company called PowerSoft, which was winning awards and gaining adherents but also attracting the attention of another little company called Microsoft. The executives at Sybase thought they could save their company by expanding into the development tools business, so they bought PowerSoft. Of course what this meant was that not only were they competing with Oracle and IBM, two much larger companies in the database business, but they were also competing with Microsoft, which had once been a partner.

Now, Novell wants to try its hand at the acquisitions game (again). The once ubiquitous networking company has made a deal to acquire SilverStream Software. As if past purchases of vendors of unrelated software (*cough* UNIX, *cough* WordPerfect) worked out so well. And, after all, SilverStream was founded by several of the executives responsible for PowerSoft’s success. So we see a struggling company, losing badly to bigger competitors in a market in which it was once strong, turning to a company founded by David Litwack and friends to change its fortunes.

SilverStream, though, has not been the success that PowerBuilder was; PowerBuilder won award after award and built some serious market share but one can’t same the same for their second effort. Back in the day, when I was writing for Software Development Magazine, the regular reviewers fought over who would get to review the latest version. And I remember when SilverStream emerged from stealth mode, probably back in the spring of 1997, as the newest competitor in the application server market; the news made most of us at NetDynamics more than a little bit nervous. But fortunately for us, lightning didn’t strike twice, with the new company focusing on the wrong part of the package (slick development tools) and not enough on what customers really wanted (fast, robust, powerful server software). SilverStream refocused, then refocused again, and now claim to be a web services company. Which means precisely what?

Now Novell, which has had much more publicity in the past two years due to their merger with consulting firm Cambridge Technology Partners than any software release, think they can leverage SilverStream to get their stock ($3.40 as I write this) back to where it was five years ago (around $8). But what they’re really doing is putting themselves more squarely in the sites of IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA, and Microsoft, all of which are firmly entrenched in the web services space and all surely happy to finish the job of crunching Novell into the dirt like an old cigarette butt.