May 17, 2003 10:51am

Does anybody really care about emphasis ?

In this morning's Washington Post, staff writers Milbank and VandeHei write that "Bush appears to be in no political danger from the failure to find chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, with Democrats reluctant to challenge Bush on any aspect of the war and polls showing Americans unconcerned about weapons discoveries." Well, here you go ! Looks like now that the US presidential campaign has begun, all will (should) be forgotten.

Not even journalists, it would seem. In the New York review of Books, Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, who traveled to Qatar during the US military expedition in Iraq on behalf of the Committee to Protect Journalists, explains it all. Sobering.

May 11, 2003 9:21pm

Europe's own defense

Looks to me that this whole Iraq mess could turned out to be a chance for Europe - "old" and new alike. Daniel Cohn-Bendit expressed the idea first. Last week's initiative by Luxemburg, Belgium, Germany and France to launch a new (...) European defense initiative - which would not, incidentally, be built 'against' NATO (at least not initially...) - seemed like a move in the right direction. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration complained. But hold on a minute, Mr Powell. When Europe doesn't spend enough on its own defense, you show your disdain. And when Europe looks to build its defense momentum, you call it a threat. Where's the logic ?  

May 11, 2003 10:23pm

Dubya's war - "matters of emphasis"

So where are Saddam's weapons of mass destruction ? "We were not lying," a Bush administration official told ABC News. " But it was just a matter of emphasis." The official was referring to the way the administration hyped the threat that Hussein posed to the USA. Beyond the issue of WMD's very existence, I am amazed by the fact that the American public seems so easily manipulated. Luckily, some Americans know how to ask the right questions, and question Dubya's administration's credibility. On 29 April, in a New York Times' op-ed, Paul Krugman does just that : "Does it matter that we were misled into war ? Some people say that it doesn't : we won, and the Iraqi people have been freed. But we ought to ask the right questions - not just about Irad, but about ourselves." I am eagerly waiting to hear fresh news about those WMD, and how the American people will take it...  

May 11, 2003 10:01pm

Never believe what they say

Are we really better off ? In a talk at the John Smith Institute on April 29 last, Samuel Brittan (columnist at the Financial Times) discussed how one should best measure happiness. He believes that GDP is no longer truly useful as an indicator of welfare. He describes the World Bank Human Development index, which contains GDP, life expectancy and literacy, as an possible alternative. His bottom line is that it is foolish to ask people if they are happy, but that rather one should look at what people actually do to determine if they are better off now than they were before. It's funny how things leads to another. Back in my trading days, Alasdair Haynes, my boss at Bankers Trust,  told me once that in the markets "you should only believe half of what you read and none of what you hear" (or may be it was the other way around - but you get his drift). Guess the theory gets refined all the time...

May 11, 2003 9:08pm

Time flies

Discipline... I guess that's what it takes ! It turns out to be much more difficult than I thought to keep this site updated. Not for like of material : I gather regularly stuff I want to discuss here. Only problem is : I never get around to doing it...

March 9, 2003 1:32pm

Answers (...) to questions about this war

As one would imagine, being a US-educated French man, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the world situation. Two weeks ago I was writing about how I couldn't understand the reasons behing Bush and Company's behavior. I think I have found them in the New York Review of Books, expressed by two great American journalists - both Pulitzer Price winners. Rather than try and paraphrase the authors, I am taking the liberty to present to you their reviews in extenso. If like me you're unclear about all this, do take the time to read what Norman Mailer and Thomas Powers have to say...  

March 3, 2003 9:52am

Data players (not telcos) are pushing convergence

During its keynote presentation at Last at VoiceCon 2003, a voice over IP industry trade show, Microsoft demoed the successful integration of speech recognition with common directories to place a phone call using VoIP. Individually, each of these technologies has been around for some time. But the fact that Microsoft has thrown its full support behind integrating voice applications onto computing systems is telling. 

For once, it furthers my observation that Microsoft could be the driving force towards real convergence. It makes sense for a company that thrives on the ubiquity of its operating system to ensure that all applications do work seamlessly together. I saw the light when I learned that Windows XP would - in esssence - be a media gateway in its own right : use it on a high bandwith network and you don't need anybody to use convergence applications (including voice). Well, things turned out to be a bit more complicated than that -- but Microsoft can afford to wait till half the world runs on WinXP... 

More importantly, it show that phone companies shouldn't be relied upon too much to push that voice and data convergence we'll all heard a lot about in the last few years. The fact is that "voice" applications are coming from a historically data-focused company. The Microsoft exhibit demonstrated interoperability with systems supplied by traditional telco-centric companies like Siemens and Nortel. Incumbent telcos have shown that they are only paying lip service to convergence applications : they don't really understand their potential, and when they do they decide that they have too much to lose. Others aren't waiting. While the phone system suppliers have been dabbling in converged data applications for several years now, I'll be watching for more exciting developments by data players in the future. 

February 23, 2003 1:12pm

Wi-Fi, telcos, you & me

Are telecom giants embracing Wi-Fi only because they have to, or because they truly have a clear vision about it ? Operators spend enormous amounts of money to build and own networks, and then charge for their use. Giant vendors like Lucent or Ericsson spend massively to develop proprietary technologies to build the networks. But France Telecom has announced that their Wi-Fi "infrastructure" would be financed (hence controlled) by others - namely hotspots owners. This is a paradigm change, and I am not convinced that even they (the telcos that is) understand its impact yet. 

Let me explain. As Wi-Fi's core techno isn't controlled by anyone (it's a standard), the business of making Wi-Fi equipment is wide open and prices of Wi-Fi devices are falling every day because manufacturers don't have to worry about paying royalties or facing patent hurdles. The use of Wi-Fi frequences is (pretty much) free.  Robert Berger, from the Center of Global Communications in Tokyo, estimates that the cost of providing 3G services in Hong Kong will be 25 times higher than the cost of building a Wi-Fi network ($10m vs. $250m + $6.4m annual licence costs to the government). Within that context it does indeed make sense for a telco like France Telecom to get into the Wi-Fi business. But along with the good news (cheap equipment, freedom from pseudo-monopoly vendors) comes a problem : how can they prevent others to get in the business as well. They say only them can provide QoS and security : I have my doubts, but say they're right. Then remains a (big) question : what is the sustainability of a model in which they do not control the network. How are they going to deal with a situation where they have to convince owners to have them manage their hotspot, rather than another telco, an ISP or anybody else for that matter. What are the barriers to entry ? What if a local authority decides that they want to offer better terms to hotspot owners - or, even worse, chooses to finance a network of their own deployed on and around the buildings they control...  

February 23, 2003 1:01pm

Indexing blogs

Google recently announced the purchase of Pyra, the blog pioneer. It turns out they want to be able to add blogs to their indexing capabilities. Makes a lot of sense. I can't wait until they launch this new service. 

February 23, 2003 11:44am

Questions about this war

There is no doubt that Saddam is a dictator and a threat to his own people and (most probably) the rest of the world. The use of force against him cannot be ruled out. So why this international mess about how to deal with the situation ? I am not sure I can add anything meaningful to the debate, but I keep asking myself questions. How come the most powerful intelligence services in the world haven't been able in 12 years (at least) to figure out exactly what weapons Saddam indeed has (and where) or hasn't. Cynically, why is it that the US can spend tens of billions to send troops in the Gulf, but can't find a way to "physically remove" the dictator - if he is such a threat. Why now, whatever happened to the search for Bin Laden. 

February 15, 2003 4:16pm

First entry : why this site 

It took me a good six months in all to come with this site. Although this is not the first web site I put up, it's actually the first one I take care of from scratch. Deciding what content to put in was the most difficult part ; the rest (finding the right template [no, I didn't design this myself...], figuring out how Frontpage really works, getting a handle on FTP uploads) is time-consuming and frustrating at times, but straightforward. So, now I have a blog ; and I need to start thinking about what I am going to write about...