“The Cloud” is basically the movement of all the data and applications to more central locations (servers in big data centers if you care) where they can be managed and updated by experts. Our many overlapping, fast and nearly ubiquitous networks (wired, cell, wireless, Internet, etc…) are an integral part of “The Cloud” as well. Apple has it’s iCloud and you see adds for “Cloud Apps” all over. You’ve heard lots of buzz about “The Cloud” and read an article or two, but it might not yet be clear to you what this “Cloud” thing is. It probably sounds like some new twist on web sites, but is it just more tech buzz or is there some substance? You would like to ask someone, “What is this whole cloud thing about?” but who to ask? I think I might be able to answer this question in a way that makes sense to those who care little for the technical and gee-whiz details.
There is some substance to “The Cloud” but as with almost everything in life, it has upsides and downsides. I’ve been computing a long time and I’ve also worked in the non-techy world, trained both technical people and business people and owned my own businesses so I think I can put this in terms that those who care little for technology can understand. If you thought “The Cloud” is just a new twist on websites you are partially right! We all use applications and they utilize data which is really what computing is all about. We have had database backed websites for a long time now, but the cloud is now turning those websites into real applications so that the applications and the data they and you depend upon no longer need to reside in each individual device with a processor. The cloud links those devices together and shares the data among them where ever you need it. The cloud is about having all your data in one central place where all those devices can use it. More importantly, the cloud is about maximizing the effectiveness of all the computing resources we have by linking them and sharing them. Initially this will make it more profitable for companies to build out “The Cloud”. Eventually it will make advanced computing innovations more available and less expensive for everyone. So to put it succinctly, “The Cloud” is the movement of all the data and applications to more central locations where they can be managed and updated by experts.
You might ask what is in this movement to “The Cloud” for me and that would be a very good question. I’ll suggest some of the possibilities for how ”The Cloud” might benefit you based on many of the problems I’ve seen my friends and family struggle with recently. First of all, if you have any data on computers and phones at all, then having it all in one location where updating a piece of it on one device causes it to be updated everywhere saves you lots of time and frustration. Next, having all of your applications in one location means that if you happen to do some work on your office computer but later must check or update when you are away from the office, you can do that from just about anywhere if you have access a network without having to interrupt what you are doing by leaving to go to your office computer. Again, time, interruptions and frustration are all averted by “The Cloud”. Also, have you ever had to write something down or copy it to a USB drive to move it to a friends computer by “sneaker net”? If the data is in “The Cloud” you can just access it from that other computer or easily send it to the friend. Finally, having all your data in “The Cloud” means that it is managed, secured and backed up by experts so you don’t have to suffer through endless updates and problems doing all that yourself. It also means depending on those nameless faceless experts whose connection to you is through their company, but since we all generally do such a poor job of managing our computer and data resources anyway, those experts are a step up even if they are not yet near perfect.
Depending on how you use computers, and by computers I mean your smart phone, laptop, iPad, eReader or any websites you regularly use, there are myriad other advantages that “The Cloud” may bring you as you adopt various facets of it. I have to say though that this does not come with no downside. The two downsides that are most likely to affect you in the near term are the network and the fact that even experts aren’t perfect and don’t get it right all the time. Let me explain. Since much of “The Cloud” now uses wireless networks for access from devices like an iPad and wireless networks can be spotty or non-existent in places and very expensive (up to $5 a minute and $20 per MB) at times as well, you may not be able to get to your data and apps sometimes or access may not be affordable at a reasonable price. Fortunately, this aspect of cloud computing will change over time and has already changed considerably as millions and billions more people begin to own computers and cell phones. Even though it is nice to have experts managing your backups, updates, security, virus checks and such they may make mistakes or not address a new threat or problem in time to save your data and applications. On top of that when those experts are in “The Cloud” they are pretty much nameless and faceless so they may not always be invested in saving you from pain. The good news is that in most cases since you have been doing a spotty job at best of managing all this, at best and “The Cloud” will make it much easier for you to ensure that their mistake does not cause you undue pain. Basically only the data (and your time) is really valuable. In most cases everything but the data can be pretty easily restored so if you keep a local copy of all your data you are pretty much covered if an when there is a mistake in “The Cloud” that affects you.
I hope that gives you all some idea of what “The Cloud” is and what it can do for you. In my next few blog posts I will discuss the various challenges to universal adoption of “The Cloud” that I see in the future, as some more of its promises and examples of how it can make your computing life easier and what it can do for you.
Lest you think that commenting on politics and economics is all I do, I thought I would put up a couple of shots of the wines I have been drinking recently with my friends at Glenn Moore’s monthly wine dinners. Though much of the wine cannot be bought today as it has been stored in various friends cellars for years, I will attempt to put approximate pricing on wines that are available in our local stores so you can look for them if you choose. We sampled the wines below at the monthly December wine dinner we often have.
Glenn Moore's Tuesday Wine dinner at Mother's - December 2011
Needless to say there was an interesting variety going from vintage champagne, a nice Sicilian white, a young Cal chard, a 1983 Reisling and a Sauterne to a young but good Argentinia, a well aged St. Julien and St. Emilion, an Aussie Cab and a great California Cab, young and old. If I remember correctly the 1983 Groth from Napa was the real stand out, but the 2007 RAZI Chard (~$35) from Sonoma was great as well and the Reisling and Sauterne were incomparable!
This January we celebrated Glenn’s birthday on a Friday instead of our usual Tuesday meeting and had another amazing collection to sample from below!
Wines we sampled at Glenn's Birthday dinner 2012
We do like old wine so the Brunello and the 1983 Talbo St. Julien were the biggest hits, however, the 2005 Bressan (~$35) from the Veneto showed as becoming a great wine and should be drinkable through 2027 or so. The 2008 Pere et Fils Bourgogne was a nice French chardonnay for the price (~$20) and both the Mumm’s Napa Brut Rose and the Mure Cremant de Alsace (both around $20) drank very nicely.
Everything from Domain de Mourchon is always good and the fact that the prices have risen by 50 to 100% recently are proof enough. If the Grande Reserve is too rich for your blood their regular 2009 Cote du Rhone goes for around $20 and is wonderful. There is also an excellent 2008 Cairanne from nearly the same area I sampled recently for around $15 which is just as good.
This is my regular house wine and I laid in enough to drink for another year or two until I find something as good (the Cairanne might be the one) I recently saw the 2009 vintage north of $25 a bottle a Central Markup. I laid in a couple of cases for around $13 a bottle to go with teh nice 2004 Barbera and 2005 Cote de Beaune that I drink for everyday wine. If you find a 2007 of this fine old vine wine pick it up.
Purchase at the vinyard in 2005 this was drinking great in 2011! All the Michel-Slumberger wines I’ve ever had have drunk great I have to admit.
This Sassela is always wonderful for around $23 and it does best drunk fairly young (5 to 10 years) and decanted.
This Chateau Gloria, though not as old as many of the wines we often drink was another real standout, but then I always love St. Julien’s.
I became very interested in economics around the time the Great Recession of 2008 hit. I had been paying attention to global economics, but really didn’t know much beyond what I was taught in Macro Economics 301 at U.Va. a long time ago (yes, I took micro too). Unfortunately, it didn’t really equip me to understand all the issues around the Fed, Fannie Mae & Mac, Lehman Brothers, CDOs, derivatives and a fiat money economy since what I was taught was based mostly on Gold Standard economics. I did, however, begin to realize that much of what people were saying was dead wrong because they were talking about it in a micro-economic sense not a macro-economic sense and I did know that the two were quite different. For one thing I knew that we were no longer on the gold-standard, the U.S.A. has guaranteed income in perpetuity from its taxing authority, the Treasury could print or create as much money as is needed by the economy or the government, and I knew the U.S. dollar was the reserve currency of the world. Those three alone made the U.S. economy and the dollar the envy of the world and pretty much guaranteed we were not and could not go bankrupt as people were saying. After all, the U.S. has amazing resources and holdings in addition to its taxing authority so using an analogy is a man who owes $50 million and spends $1 million a year, but owns $250 Million broke or going bankrupt? No, of course not, especially if he is investing in a business that will eventually bring in $2 Million a year. I worked for a company that didn’t make money for over 10 years, but did a successful IPO and was growing by leaps and bounds and it wasn’t bankrupt either. I wondered a great deal about Dick Cheney’s famous statement that, “deficits don’t matter” and how that related to our budget and our national debt. Finally, I had run across the curious fact that every time we run surpluses and try to retire debt we run into a recession or depression. Look it up if you like so here are the years: 1819, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1929 and 1999. Here is a particularly cogent explanation of why a sovereign government is absolutely NOT like a household or a business – http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/02/10/the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-household-budget-heres-why-8230/
All this and the screams of what have sometimes been called the “deficit terrorists” for their fanaticism about cutting the budget, fiscal austerity and the national debt (not to mention some crazies calling for the abolition of the Fed and a return to the Gold Standard) led me to search out a school of economics that used data from the last forty years (since Nixon took us fully off the gold standard in 1971 by ending gold converibiliyt) to describe what is going on in macro economics and helps recommend policies and proscriptions to remedy our economic ills going forward.
OK, I’ll say it even though it may be wildly unpopular in the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. We still need a nuclear renaissance in the U.S.A. I’ve been studying nuclear energy and there just might be a design that is safe, burns nuclear waste, emits no CO2 and might just help save the world.
Environmentalists are right that nuclear power, as we have it today and have seen it in Fukushima, is not entirely safe. The light water reactors we have today are not passively safe, use only about 1% of the natural uranium in their fuel, are badly sited and are getting old. Despite that, by the numbers nuclear is not nearly as dangerous as coal, gas, wind or even solar. The reality is that we have had Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, yet commercial nuclear power has not killed a single person in the U.S.A. in 61 years and only 56 at Chernobyl which was an epic failure of communist management, incompetence and disregard for their workers. Maybe we have just been lucky, but as of today, at least forty-one workers have died in the production of modern wind turbines, hundreds, thousands in China every year, have died mining coal ( 25 at the Upper Big Branch mine in W.Va last April) not to mention thousands or tens of thousands affected by emissions by coal plants. Hundreds have died in petroleum plant disasters and extraction accidents. Natural gas is certainly safer and cleaner, but still emits tons of CO2. Don’t get me wrong because I’m still a strong advocate for solar, wind and biofuels (there is nothing so efficient as a liquid fuel for transportation). Natural gas is leaps and bounds better than coal in so many ways so I am strongly in favor of replacing as many of our aging coal plants as can be replaced quickly with natural gas plants. Even with all these options, none of them really solves all the problems we need to solve for global society for power generation in the first half of this century.
For modern society there are three major problems that we have to solve or at least get on the road to solving in the next ten to twenty years. Those problems are as follows:
We have to find some way to lower and then eliminate the majority of CO2 emissions as early in this century as possible.
We have a serious problem with nuclear waste and weapons grade nuclear materials that we have to deal with by using them for fuel or storing them safely.
We need a base power source for the grid that can produce reliable power on a 24x7x365 basis which solar and wind cannot satisfy.
Nuclear power plants also have some problems that we have seen close up at Fukushima and some that are not so obvious:
Most of our plants are old and based on old designs that are very inefficient and not nearly as safe as the new designs. The last plant was begun in 1977 as a Gen II design and now we have Gen IV designs almost ready to go.
Nuclear power plants are take a very long time to build and are incredibly expensive as well because they are each one off designs built in place.
Supplies of known uranium will run out using current designs in 50 to 150 years depending on how many new plants are built.
Both light and heavy water reactors of current designs in use less than 1% of the natural uranium that begins th fuel cycle and they produce masses of dangerous waste products that cannot reused.
What if there were a safe new nuclear reactor design that produced consistent reliable energy with almost no CO2 emissions and could be mass produced and put into service much more quickly and inexpensively than our existing designs? What if those new nuclear plants were designed for passive safety and could use up most of the nuclear waste and weapons grade fissile materials that we need to get rid of at a 95% efficiency? What if the new nuclear plant designs could do all that and revive U.S. manufacturing prowess and rejuvenate America as a leader in safe green energy in the world? What if we had tested this new technology safely for 30 years and one of our industrial titans has a design ready to build now as a prototype and could begin manufacturing commercial reactors as early as 2015.
You say that sounds like too good to be true? Well, GE has their S-PRISM advanced reactor design almost ready to go. What it mostly needs now is public, political and financial support to get going again. The design, known as an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) or Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor (ALMR), is not new, so it is tested. It was originally developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho achieving first criticality in 1965 and it operated until 1994. GE Hitachi has a variant for commercialization called the Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (S-PRISM), which is the reactor portion and a key component to closing the nuclear fuel cycle by reusing spent nuclear fuel (and weapons grade fuel) instead of storing it. The DOE in 2001 created a 200+ PERSON task force of scientists from DOE, UC Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, ANL, LLNL, Toshiba, Westinghouse, Duke, EPRI, and others to evaluate the best new reactor designs on 27 different criteria. The IFR ranked #1 in their study released April 9, 2002. Though there are a few IFRs operating as test beds at present there are no Integral Fast Reactors in commercial operation.
I have been convinced now that the IFR can and should be a vital part of our solutions to Global Warming and can be key in an American resurgence in manufacturing and technology. Please read the following articles and see if you agree:
While I believe that in the near term the IFR derivatives like GE’s S-PRISM are the answer to both managing our nuclear waste stream and producing CO2 free electric power for management of global warming, the Thorium LFTR reactor concept is probably the answer to base electric production in combination with wind, solar, wave and bio fuels. In fact the LFTR can help in production of eco-friendly synthetic fuels via heat from water and CO2.
Taylor Mali, teacher and slam poet, gives you a piece of his mind on what teachers really make. He has a policy on honesty and a$$kicking that if you really ask for it he has to give it to you!
Betcha didn’t think he was going to say all that did you?
My step-father, Bob Schenkkan, died yesterday (Wednesday, Feb 9th, 2010) at age 93. Bob was wonderful to my mother, my little brother, David and me, but Bob was a remarkable person and lived a full and remarkable life so I thought I would write a little and put pictures, links and other information here in a blog post on my site so that anyone who wants to find it can do so. Friends, family and acquaintances can be assured that his passing was peaceful and dignified with hospice in attendance and his wife and family surrounding him. His last years were spent at Arden Courts where he was much loved and well taken care of by the excellent staff and many of his friends and family visited him each week.
Bob meant many things to many people, but one of his most important lasting legacies is his contribution and work for Public Broadcasting. Jim Lehrer might have put it best when he said, “Bob Schenkkan is a hero to me and to every one of us PBS people. He gave us life and then he saved us.” Jim Lehrer (video wishes for Bob Schenkkans 90th birthday from the KLRU Bob Schenkkan Tribute DVD)”
I’ve decided to go paperless in my office. Currently all my expense reports for independent consulting require scanned receipts and I use the flat bed scanner on my color inkjet printer to do this, then I organize the PDFs manually. That process works, but is very tedious and time consuming. I have seen the NeatScanner ads on TV and decided that going paperless is a really good idea as long as the scanning and organizing is easy and quick. This will depend on the design, reliability and layout of the scanner as well as how well the bundled software is thought out and works. First I hope to use a portable scanner that I can take on the road and use for expense reports. Then if the scanner is good enough it can be used as a desktop scanner for all documents and receipts. The scanning has to be easy and not awkward and the software has to be efficient and easy to use to organize and categorize all the receipts. Finally, it must be very easy to back up the receipts to a CD, DVD or USB drive by type or year and also very easy to restore and use those receipts if the originals are not available. The first step is to evaluate the possible scanners.
Initial Requirements:
Scanner must be portable and easily fed with receipts and documents. Later we will review desktop scanners to feed larger amounts of documents.
Scan quality must be high. Ideally, it should make faded or wrinkled receipts readable and able to be OCR’d and made searchable and indexed.
Process of scanning, converting to PDF and using OCR to make searchable and indexed must be fairly seamless.
Bundled software must make organizing and categorizing the receipts and documents easy and not be time consuming.
Backing up AND restoring must be very easy and work 100% of the time.
Potential Scanners:
Brother® DSmobile® 600 Compact Color Scanner - This mobile scanner has 16 of 16 positive reviews on Staples site. It seems to have a 5 star rating, but has very little information on the bundled software. It is reasonably priced at $149.99 and also portable. It claims to provide a simple but effective tool to capture, manage and archive documents of many types. It connects directly to your computer via a USB cable and allows you to scan and save images of documents like invoices, statements, letters, or pictures. It is powered by the USB system in the computer so you don’t need any batteries or AC power supply. This may be my first choice to buy and review.
Visioneer RoadWarrior RW120-WU Sheetfeed Scanner ($115.50 w/ $50 rebate) – This seems to be a very popular scanner and is probably my second choice.
Visioneer Strobe XP 100 ($199.95) – sheetfed scanner 12-bit gray Single-pass 600 Scans – Ideal for the mobile executive, the Strobe™ XP 100 Scanner from Visioneer® is compact enough to fit neatly on your desk and pack easily alongside your laptop or in your briefcase. It scans and organizes all of your documents, photos, articles, brochures and business cards. The Strobe™ XP 100 is integrated with ScanSoft PaperPort Deluxe 8.0 software, making it easy to organize your life and work. Now you can scan and file all your documents and photographs electronically right alongside your electronic documents from Microsoft® Office, PDF files from Adobe™ Acrobat and image files from numerous other applications. Whether you’re in the office or on the road, the Strobe™ XP 100 helps lighten your load. Manufacturer Part# : SXP1001-DB Dell Part# : A0059194
Ambir PS467 simplex scanner ($194.99) – Another mobile scanner that claims it is ideal for both travel and desktop use, the highly-portable Ambir PS467 simplex scanner conveniently connects via USB to any PC with no external power adapter needed. Quickly and easily scan business cards, photos and documents measuring up to 8.5″ x 14″. The PS467 comes with AmbirScan, Ambir’s powerful imaging software. AmbirScan features support for PDF, JPEG, GIF, BMP, and now TIFF extensions. Fixed file locations let you set a default save location for your scans.
Canon P-150 Portable Scanner CLR 600DPI 24 bit USB 15PPM ($299.99) – The P-150 personal scanner’s compact size, simple use, and advanced feature set liberates document capture by taking it beyond the walls of the office to the convenience of any user location.
PageManager7 software – This is bundled with the Brother DSmobile 600 and will be evaluated with that scanner
More software to be added here.
If you read this and have suggestions for scanners or software please send then to hireme (at) rothgeb.net and I will try to acquire and evaluate them. Thanks!
I wrote an article late last year here about the open-source and freeware applications that I used on my Windows XP PC (a Dell D620 Duo Core with 4GB RAM and a 100GB hard drive). It is now about time to update this article with what I’m using on my new laptop (a Lenovo W510 with an i7 Quad Core processor and 16GB of RAM). I’m a pretty heavy duty user and along with using Office to write docs and create presentations I do a lot of virtualization with VMWare for my consulting practice, but most of the tools I use to keep my Windows PC running smoothly will work for you as well. With Windows there are a few things you really must do if you time and data are worth anything to you like mine are. These are the “must dos” that I follow and recommend you should too. Below them are the tools you will need to do this so the next time you get a virus or a hard drive crash you aren’t out data, cash, time and customers.
Run good anti-virus software and a spyware/malware scanner and cleaner.
Buy the largest USB drive you can afford to do backups and then do your backups.
Use CloneZilla to make a clean back up your operating system partition when you get a new PC. You never know when you might need to do a bare metal restore. Bare metal restore is the solution of last resort for hardware and malware/virus problems.
Back up your registry and know how to restore it if you have to do so.
Back up your operating system when you have all your applications and tools installed and configured (without your data) so you don’t have to reinstall everything if your hard drive crashes or you get a virus that can’t be removed.
Back up your data to the USB drive on a regular basis. I keep all my data including e-mail in the My Documents folder and I copy it all to my USB drive regularly.
Here is a list of the most useful applications and freeware that I use all the time that would be appropriate for regular everyday users. Most, but not all of them are open source or freeware, but most are well under $100. Thus with a modest investment in tools and time you can have everything you need to keep your PC running smoothly and your data and applications safe. The first thing I always start with is the anti-virus software:
Mozilla FireFox Web Browser – IE is better these days, but FireFox is much more secure when browsing the Web. I use it as my default browser. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/
CloneZilla Live – I used Ghost for years, but just used this on my new laptop and it works great! Download the ISO and burn it to CD and go – back up your hard drive. http://clonezilla.org/
Here are a few more useful tools I keep handy or install on my
CCCleaner – CCleaner is a system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner and it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!
Partition Magic – This is a great application for managing your partitions on disk, but unfortunately Symantec discontinued it and it only works on Windows XP and earlier. I’m now testing QTParted and GParted LiveCD. EASEUS Partition Master is also a free replacement, but I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. Here is the link to Partition Master. http://www.partition-tool.com/ If you prefer commercial software Paragon, Acronis and Maxtor have commercial disk partitioning software available too and Acronis has a good reputation.
Shields Up! – from the Gibson Research web site, http://www.grc.com/intro.htm , is a great site to test your router’s internet security and I often use their incomparable Spin Rite 6.0 disk utility to keep my hard disks in shape.
Now these tools above are not the only tools that can do the job. They are just what I use or have used and can recommend. There are many more available tools and there are also many free tools, both Windows and Linux, that can be used to perform most or all of the same functions: anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, disk partitioning, disk imaging and CD/DVD burning. Some tools will work well and others may not. Some will be easy to use and others may be really difficult or not have good documentation. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend or guarantee the freeware and Linux tools will always work properly or are easy to use (but mostly they do), but they are available if you want to try them out. Some may take an expert level of *nix skill to get them to work properly and easily. I don’t use “free” as a criteria to protect my valuable data, however, there are many capable open source and Linux tools that will do the job well. I try to balance how efficient a tool is (how effective, easy and how much time it takes to use) with how much is costs as my criteria on which tool to use. I have had success in the past with Partition Magic and Ghost because they were the first tools of their type for OS/2 and Windows and my employers at the time had purchased them for our use, but I am transitioning to CloneZilla and GParted LiveCD. I will continue to edit and expand this list and will add any open source and Linux tools that I manage to test successfully.
I also use these three open source software packages on my Windows laptop and when I’m on my Linux desktop:
Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) or 10.10 which is just out
Linux Mint 9 – easiest of all installs and the best looking out of the box
The Rolling Stone story on Stanley McChrystal and and his staff has highlighted Afghan War and fueled speculation that McChrystal might be fired or replaced. In my view this isn’t really the question and I think that McChrystal’s summons to the White House and his meeting with Secretary of Defense Gates actually show this. Wisely both Obama and Gates have decided that the was is bigger than just one man as is the Presidency. In characteristic Obama style the President is waiting to make a decision until he meets face to face with his commander in the most important foreign policy initiative of his presidency. Were I Obama I would sit down with McChrystal and ask him how he is going to make this right and is he still the right man for the job? After all, McChrystal has basically alienated everyone on the State Department side and many others in the civilian chain of command that he must work with in order to get some sort of acceptable resolution in Afghanistan and steps must be taken to resolve this or replace the general with someone who can work with Biden, Jones, Holbrooke, the NATO representatives and others. Only if McChrystal comes up with excellent answers should the President not accept his resignation. McChrystal is exceptionally capable and Obama has continuity at a critical time when the tide in Afghanistan just might be turning, after all it often looks darkest before the light, to consider.
I honestly don’t think Robert Gibbs would have been in the loop on what may be in store for Gen McChrystal if Obama and Gates are truly waiting to talk to the general to decide. He certainly should have declined to answer when asked whether the general’s job was safe. I doubt that his statement that “all options are on the table” and “our efforts in Afghanistan are bigger then one person” means they can do this without him, but may mean they might have to do so if this has damaged McChrystal beyond redemption with those he does have to work with. Remember, he only has to answer to Gates, Clinton and Obama, he has to work with all the others.
The public humiliation of Gen McChrystal is certainly meant to make him think long and hard about the atmosphere of disrespect he let fester and the lapse in judgment in allowing it to go public. Also, what his mistake may mean to the effort he is tasked with making succeed. It is just an added benefit that the President looks tough in the face of an impertinent general as well.
I think President Obama has probably been called enough names not to worry too much about the leadership showing him respect as commander-in-chief as long as they are unified and working to make progress in the morass that is Afghanistan. He does have to consider continuity in leadership in Afghanistan at a crucial time, but this crisis may just act to clear the air and get all parties in leadership positions to really get their eye on the goal and work together for once. If I were Obama I might give McChrystal a few weeks to mend fences and get momentum back and then I would call all the players together in Kabul or outside of Afghanistan and see what progress has been made on the team and even knock a few heads together myself.
Follow up, Monday June 28th:
Well, President Obama accepted General McChrystal’s resignation to generally positive statements from both sides of the isle. The President garnered support and even praise from his handling of this affair from almost everyone except inveterate Obama haters. Obama showed respect and sensitivity for a military man who supported him by meeting with McChrystal in person to accept his resignation. Apparently McChrystal couldn’t assure the President that he could work effectively going forward with both the civilian diplomatic team and his command after the damaging comments in the Rolling Stone article. My prediction that this may have been an opening to clear the air and get a new better start in Afghanistan proved to be correct though in a way I didn’t see as likely, the appointment of General Petraeus as theater commander. Yes, it was important that the foundations of our democracy, civilian command of the military, were respected by the military. The public comments from General McChrystal’s team were intemperate and showed particularly bad judgement in setting a command tone in a theater where politics and may be more important than military effectiveness, but our democracy would not be permanently damaged if Obama had kept McChrystal and he had led us to success in Afghanistan. I still think that the most important aspect of this whole debacle is the effectiveness and ability of the military commander to work together with the whole team, diplomatic and military, in Afghanistan. The appointment of Petraeus puts a particularly effective leader in place to adjust the tactics so they can be as effective as possible. Petraeus will also evaluate the strategy and team and hopefully renew the focus on both means and ends so with a little luck and a lot of hard work good may come out of a nasty and unfortunate situation.
I must say, after watching the Sunday news shows, that I too wish we did not have to be in Afghanistan, but unfortunately I don’t think we have much choice unless we want to put up with a permanent haven for Al Queda next to an unstable nuclear power, Pakistan. I do think it was a proper move to topple the Taliban and help rebuild a representative government in Afghanistan, but I lament the tepid support of our European allies who suffered attacks on 3/11 (Once Emme in Spain) and on the Tube in London as well as many other failed attempts at terrorism. Rebuilding Afghanistan into a stable state where human rights are respected is a job the whole world has an interest in and should be taken on in a more proportional manner. I still hope we can start to withdraw troops next year near the deadline and the Afghans military and police force can start to take over their own security, however, I don’t think the U.S. should ever “get out” of Afghanistan, rather, we should transition from military involvement in Afghanistan to mainly civilian developmental and economic assistance in Afghanistan. We cannot afford to be out of the Middle East, but rather should take the Saudi model of spreading schools across all those countries and teach our gospel of democracy, freedom of self determination and freedom of religion. This so Sunnis can quit killing Shiites and Sufis and men can quit oppressing women throughout that region.
In business we talk about CRM and managing all the touches any organization makes from all departments to its customers. This way the tech support rep knows when the sales guy promises a customer something and they both know when that customer has spoken to a VP or the CEO. In our personal lives as opposed to our work lives we struggle to manage e-mail, IM, Facebooking, LinkedIning, Blogging, Twittering, etc.. Basically what we need is a configurable portal with a more efficient, standardized and powerful UI than any of our apps and sites offer us individually (and perhaps we need some form of reporting as well? – interesting thought). Either we blow these contacts off when they get overwhelming or we blow the rest of life off to stay engaged with all the various means of communication. There should be a better way, shouldn’t there? I’m proposing to call this new type of interface or application Social CRM or maybe SRM (Social Relationship Management). It would consist of an interface that manages all our e-mail, social networking sites, blogging, IM and our Calendar. There are probably other things I should throw into the kitchen sink as well, but I’ll add them later (now I’m going to get on my bike and take a ride in the real world).
Well, I spent most of my day going through all my e-mail, reading news, facebooking, plaxoing and LinkedIning again. I have been thinking about how to deal with this for a while and have looked at some tools like Digsby, but they don’t really seem to work for me. What would be nicest I think would be to have an application like Outlook, but either in Java or a Cloud app, that integrated all your e-mail, social networking and news. It would also be nice if you could do your blogging and tweeting from that app and even better would be if it could automatically purge and archive all your info in a MySQL database and had powerful tools for searching (natural language searches anyone?) that database. Oh, and it would have to have portability and backup capabilities like sync and export/import (in many formats). Ideally it would be highly configurable in both UI and options so that you didn’t have to configure and reconfigure it. Oh, and while I’m asking for the moon it might as well have IM capabilities as well. With all the rage for smart phones and the reported imminent demise of the desktop/laptop (laptops are the new desktops now aren’t they except for graphics workstations, gaming systems and servers) no one is really looking to create the killer app for a full OS/Gui these days it seems. Oh well, sigh. Here are the things I would like to manage (all communication) in one app:
E-mail – 3 addresses: personal, work and job hunting (one should be able to see one account or all accounts and it should archive according to your rules – search should be powerful too)
Calendar (should be able to take appointments and notes from
Task List – To Do
Social Networking – Facebook (for friends), LinkedIn (for work) and Plaxo (for address book and possibly Calendar), Twitter
Blogging
IM
News Feeds through RSS
Oh, and while were are at it, it might as well manage all our bookmarks with accounts and passwords!
I must look into the APIs for the Social Networking sites and tools to see if we can add them to something like Thunderbird and Open Office in order to make the ultimate killer application. Here are the API pages:
The idea would be to create an application with a UI that each user could arrange to their own satisfaction in order that it be as intuitive as possible. It would also be highly efficient to use automating many tasks and only taking one click (learning maybe) to do the most common tasks (like moving an e-mail to folders). Post your thoughts on SRM here and I’ll respond.
Actually, in writing this I am seeing some possibilities. All these applications are essentially of three types: reading, writing, or reading and writing. All the apps/sites can mostly have data pulled to be read or written with an API like POP, IMAP Graph API or some other. The reading apps mostly have messages of some length in a list that can be read like a list of e-mails (with a reading pane), a list of messages in Twitter, a newsfeed in Facebook or a list of contacts in Plaxo, LinkedIn or Facebook. In fact Outlook (or as I prefer to call it LookOut!) actually manages messages, contacts and calendar and allows you to read and write to both, but it doesn’t identify where those messages come from or allow you to easily hide your personal e-mail so you can concentrate on your work e-mail for example. So in effect, if one could app the APIs to pull in FB, LI, Plaxo and Twitter data and you could easily manage what data you wanted to work with in your UI then Outlook might be close to the perfect tool. I guess in some sense the various social networking/messaging platforms have just outrun Outlook. This leaves the question of whether it would make sense to reinvent the wheel when all Microsoft would have to do is add plug-ins for the social networking platforms or whether someone should build a new cloud platform that will obsolete Outlook?
Recent Comments