Nerds only: new Outlook indexer "Lookeen"

As mentioned earlier, I have twice installed and twice removed versions of the much-touted Outlook indexer Xobni. In theory Xobni was great; in practice, for me, it was no good because it gobbled so much of my computer's memory and CPU that it paralyzed everything else on the machine. Details in previous posts.

Through controlled experiment I think I've established that my Xobni problem is a "scale" issue. I've tried it on a computer with only a few hundred emails to index; it worked like magic. On my real computer, with tens of thousands of emails in Outlook .PST files spanning the last decade, it broke down. (In its current version, Xobni does not allow you to choose which .PSTs you want it to handle; it tackles everything it finds. I understand that this may change -- and that other speed and scaling improvements are on their way.) This would explain why some people who've written in are so happy with it -- they don't have that many stored emails -- while others share my exact complaint.

An alternative to check out: the non-touted Lookeen, from a tiny little firm in Germany. The searches it runs are extremely fast, and it imposes no detectable burden on the computer's overall speed. It lets you choose which .PST files you want to include or omit -- though you might as well include everything, since it seems to handle a > 100,000-item index about as fast as a small one. Fourteen-day free trial available; after that, $39.80. Worth a look -- as is, of course, the long-time champ of very fast, very scalable PC search engines, X1.

(For those joining us late: the reason to bother with any of these is that the built-in Outlook search system is so clumsy and slow.)

The one thing my colleagues didn't point out about Sydney Pollack

In their gracious encomia to the late Siydney Pollack earlier this week, my Atlantic colleagues pointed many of his admirable traits but didn't highlight* this one: avid pilot! As he said in an interview with AOPA Pilot magazine ten years ago:

"I don't have other hobbies. I've never been on a golf course, I don't play cards, and I don't collect art; but I love to fly airplanes."

Pollack decided to learn to fly when he grew irritated with the hassles of commercial airlines, and that was decades ago, back in what now seems the golden age of comfort aloft. And for better or worse, it was Pollack who convinced Tom Cruise to learn to fly, after Cruise starred in Top Gun. RIP.

* Jeffrey Goldberg mentioned that he "flew his own plane," though this could be read as in "he flew Northwest to Detroit."

Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep

Since I am the last person within reach of a computer to weigh in about Jim Webb as a running mate for Barack Obama, I'll make up for the lateness with the simplicity of my point:

- Until 7pm November 4, 2008, Webb might well be a very strong addition to the ticket.

- On November 5, the troubles -- for Webb -- would begin.

About Webb's value up through election day, I realize that there's an argument: Would his credentials on national security and as an undoubtedly tough southern Populist offset, among other problems, the perceived slight to older women among Hillary Clinton's base? It's like a vector problem in physics. My belief is that, purely as a matter of electoral math, Webb would help Obama much more than he would hurt. But I know that's a judgment call, with countless ramifications to argue out.

The problem is what would happen if he did help Obama win. Having first met Webb nearly thirty years ago -- and having co-written an Atlantic cover story with him, and having broken my rule against giving money to political candidates two years ago when he began his Senate run -- I can't imagine a job he would enjoy less than the vice presidency.

Continue reading "Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep" »

Who could ever have seen this coming? (Macau dept)

In an article last week that is now behind the WSJ's subscriber wall, two reporters whom I mercifully won't name say that US-based "gaming" companies like Las Vegas Sands and Wynn are starting to have problems in Macau. Heart of the story:

Even as the U.S. operators pour billions into the market, they are struggling to overcome an unforeseen obstacle: the growing power of local middlemen in determined where big-spending, so-called VIP players spend their money

"Unforeseen"? The few prescient geniuses who happened to anticipate this problem included, let's see.... every single person I interviewed about the Macau situation in the spring and summer of last year, for this article in the Atlantic. There is even an authoritative academic study of the phenomenon, here. "Stanley Ho’s four-decade monopoly on all casino business might seem the strangest part of Macau’s economic structure," my story said, referring to the local Mr. Big. "It was not: That distinction has belonged to the related system of VIP rooms, which has also been the foundation of Macau’s gambling economy—and which poses the greatest challenge to Macau’s ability to come into sync with international norms."

If the big U.S. companies really have been blindsided by the VIP phenomenon, maybe customers have a better chance in Vegas casinos than they thought. Maybe "the house" is not really that sharp.

I suppose outlawing the word "Homeland" wouldn't count?

Via Lewis Shepherd, news of a $25,000 competition to come up with the best idea to improve "Homeland Security." The competition is run by the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation and apparently funded by AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of the Italian-based defense contractor Finmeccanica. Deadline for entries is this Friday afternoon.

Anyone can have, free, my entry in the contest: dumping the hideous, un-American, Orwellian, Teutonic-in-the-bad-sense term "Homeland" and renaming both the department and the entire concept "domestic" security.

Obama at Wesleyan: a subtle elegance I missed the first time

Via reader Rachel, a heads up on a sublime aspect of Barack Obama's recent commencement speech at Wesleyan. (Previously on the speech here and here.)

To review: Obama was there in place of the ailing Teddy Kennedy. Kennedy had given Obama a huge boost in the legitimacy-and-legacy category by endorsing him, even if it didn't help much in the MA. primary. And Kennedy's most famous speech was his "concession" speech at the 1980 Democratic convention in New York, when he brought the house down (I was there) with his defiant reassertion of the liberal values that he thought the doomed incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had abandoned. His speech ended with these words:

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

The structure of Obama's speech, these 28 years later, built toward praise of Kennedy's legacy and record, and ended with these words:

That is all I ask of you on this joyous day of new beginnings; that is what Senator Kennedy asks of you as well, and that is how we will keep so much needed work going, and the cause of justice everlasting, and the dream alive for generations to come.

As Rachel points out, this ending was

an allusion so subtle that Kennedy himself might be the only person who caught it. Obama took the speech of Ted's lifetime... and put the three key words - work, cause, dream - into the last line of the text. Poetry into prose, a private tribute to the man whose endorsement took Obama from runner up to winner.

What is so elegant about this touch? Precisely that Obama did not feel obliged to spell out all the links. ("And what I ask of you, in Senator Kennedy's own unforgettable words...") Politicians shouldn't be obscure. But a willingness to assume good things about the public -- its knowledge, its understanding, its ability to rise above the most immediate appeal to pocketbook or prejudice -- is part of what makes a politician into a leader. Even if the intended audience for this close was strictly the Kennedy family, it is an impressive bit of craftsmanship.

Seventy-three days to go (updated)

In my article about China's environmental-improvement efforts, in the current Atlantic, I talk about the Chinese scientists in charge of monitoring air quality in Beijing as the Olympics draw near. They laid out for me the timeline for getting cars, factories, power plants, etc under control so that the air is acceptable before opening day, August 8. Interestingly, the working definition of "acceptable" is "comparable to the L.A. Olympics in 1984."

I wonder whether it's about time for the shutdown and cleanup plans to start? It's been pretty bad these last few days. (May 27, 9am, Guomao area of Beijing:)

I also wonder, only half-jokingly, whether right now the factories are running extra fast (and extra smokily), to get as much produced as they can before the impending multi-week shutdown. As with everything on the "We are ready!" front, we'll see...

Update: I wasn't imagining it! Via Sage Brennan, a reminder of this (Chinese language) monitoring site for Beijing municipal air pollution. It reports the pollution index today in many downtown areas at 500! That is bad. I'm betting it's the top of the scale, too, since there are no readings above that. As a benchmark, on New Year's Day readings were generally below 50. Yesterday, which was no one's idea of a crisp, clear day, they were only in the mid-100s. Jeesh!

If you happen to be in Beijing this evening (May 27)

I'm going to be at the Beijing Bookworm at 7:30pm to talk about the Atlantic, the U.S. media, politics, writing projects, and so forth. This is part of the Bookworm's long-established and active program of presentations by writers in the vicinity.

(Address: Building 4, Nan Sanlitun Road, Chao Yang District.)

More on speechwriting and Obama's Wesleyan address (updated)

(Major update after the jump)

Yesterday (China time) I mentioned that, based on comparisons of a commencement address he delivered two years ago and one he gave this weekend, Barack Obama "has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking."

Several people have written back to say: Well, maybe he just has better speechwriters! And: Since you (me) used to work as a speechwriter (for Jimmy Carter), shouldn't you be particularly sensitive to this point?

Answer, to the second question: No. And it's precisely because I have worked is this field that my answer to the first question is: I don't care who originally came up with these phrases or drafted the speech.

If a public figure's basic quality of mind or ability to express himself is in question, as frankly is the case with President George W. Bush, then it might be worth investigating whether the words he is uttering actually reflect his underlying outlook and comprehension.

Continue reading "More on speechwriting and Obama's Wesleyan address (updated)" »

The future lies ahead (Obama at Wesleyan)

I have written (for myself and others), delivered, and heard a large number of Commencement speeches over the years. It is a surprisingly difficult form to pull off without embarrassment. The tricky part is to make the homily-type "seize the challenge of the future!" points that really are required on such occasions, without sounding sappy, pompous, cliched, or --worst --long-winded. The test is: could someone read the transcript, at a safe remove from the emotions of the day, without giggling or yawning?

Barack Obama passed that test yesterday, when subbing for Sen. Kennedy at the Wesleyan commencement ceremony. Or so I judge by reading the transcript of the speech just now.

For instance, this is a subtler version of a familiar point, more deftly made, than commencement speakers -- especially politicians -- are usually able to get across.

Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.

But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story

By wild chance, I actually sat a few feet from Obama when he gave another commencement speech, at Northwestern, two years ago.* That speech was good, but based on this latest transcript he has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking since then. These speeches are poems in that they don't allow the space to spell points out prosaically, and in their goal of evoking familiar, universal feelings in an unusual way. Such progress, from a high starting point, is worth noticing.

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* Obama was the university's commencement speaker, and recipient of an honorary degree, that day in 2006. Just before leaving for China, I also got a Northwestern honorary degree at the same ceremony. In addition to the obvious humbling honor of that fact, the wild chance was that I walked just behind Obama in the long, slow procession and sat next to him on the stage. The tens of thousands of people in Ryan Field erupted in cheers as soon as they saw Obama in the procession -- he had not announced for president at that point, but he was already a star, and after all he was the state's new senator. It is quite a strange phenomenon to be two feet away from the object of a gigantic crowd's attention. Strange, but fun.

Update: I see that M. Yglesias also picked out this very passage in a post from Sunday night.

'Good Luck Beijing'

The finals of the Good Luck Beijing 2008 track and field event, this evening at the "Bird's Nest" stadium that will be the center of the Olympic Games, was on the whole a promising omen on the "is Beijing ready?" front concerning the Olympics.

On the "hmmmmm" side: Air pollution still pretty bad today, 75 days before the opening ceremonies; interior of stadium, especially bathrooms, showing surprising wear and tear for a place that awaits its official debut; visually-striking exterior beams also already sooty and stained. And whole Olympic area still full of projects with a fair amount of work to do.

But: crowd flow good for the event (it looked as if only about half the seats had been opened for sale, perhaps as a test for handling scale); security screening quite quick and non-intrusive; the stadium's design truly is stunningly impressive, more so up close than from a distance; and hordes of young guides were peppy, helpful, cheery, and ready with English-language "Welcome to National Stadium! Enjoy the games!" greetings.

Most touching moment of the evening, by far: Men's 4 x 100m relay. The Chinese national team bungled the final baton pass and was out of contention. The anchor man for the Japanese national team was surging toward the tape -- when out of nowhere, maybe from fifth place overall, the anchor runner for the Sichuan provincial team stormed ahead to nip the Japanese runner at the last possible instant and win by .01 of a second.

Cheers absolutely rocked the stadium -- 10%, I thought, because the Japanese had not won, and 90% in appreciation for beleaguered Sichuan, which is of course the province devastated by the earthquake.

Triumphant Sichuan Province men's 4x100m relay team on the stadium big screen just after its victory, heroic anchorman in the middle:

Oddest moment: playing of the national anthem at award ceremony for each event. Some 95%+ of all competitors were from China -- a typical event would have someone from Beijing, someone from Guangdong, someone from Shanxi, someone from Xinjiang, etc etc, plus the occasional Malaysian or Australian. But when the medals were given out, it was the national rather than provincial song that was played, as if the Star Spangled Banner were played after each event at a NCAA track meet. We became quite familiar with China's national anthem.

Still, on the whole an exciting and encouraging event -- and touching, thanks to the Sichuan team.

Credit to the pioneers (updated twice)

All journalism involves simplification and compression. Otherwise a story could never end and would always be longer than the event it describes, to take all perspectives into account. Even our chronicles in the Atlantic involve serious last-minute cutting -- believe it or not!

Thus Fareed Zakaria's latest column in Newsweek, which as usual I agree with, has to leave out certain details to get to the main point. The main point: that there is such a thing as exaggerated fear of terrorism, and that U.S. politics shows ample and self-destructive illustrations of it.

Certain details necessarily left out of this column but that should remain on the record: the pioneering role of scholars like John Mueller (of Ohio State), Benjamin H. Friedman (of MIT -- not the economist Benjamin M. Friedman of Harvard), Ian Lustick (of Penn), Veronique de Rugy (now of George Mason U's Mercatus Center), and others in arguing from the start that the United States needed to be careful about doing too much, too cumbersomely, in its attempt to "protect" itself against every risk. My chronicle of their activities and arguments was in a 2006 Atlantic cover story, "Declaring Victory."

This was not so safe or comfortable an argument to make back, say, in 2004 when Benjamin Friedman began doing so. Such efforts are worth remembering.

Update: The security expert Bruce Schneier also deserves a place on the list of "sane when everyone else was going berserk" honorees. For instance, the issue of his "Crypto-Gram" newsletter that came out immediately after the 9/11 attacks said this:

Airline security measures are primarily designed to give the appearance of good security rather than the actuality. This makes sense, once you realize that the airlines' goal isn't so much to make the planes hard to hijack, as to make the passengers willing to fly. Of course airlines would prefer it if all their flights were perfectly safe, but actual hijackings and bombings are rare events and they know it.

This is not to say that all airport security is useless, and that we'd be better off doing nothing. All security measures have benefits, and all have costs: money, inconvenience, etc. I would like to see some rational analysis of the costs and benefits, so we can get the most security for the resources we have.

Some of Schneier's more recent thoughts here. Thanks to Jay Ackroyd for this reminder.

Update #2: Fareed Zakaria himself was also writing some "let's get a grip here" articles fairly early on, for instance this in 2004. (This previous post concerns a similar earlier battle.) And, this front page story in Monday's New York Times illustrates how far in the brainless auto-pilot direction Homeland "Security" policy has gone. It's much as foreseen in pop fiction.

The next three points about MacBook Air

As promised recently, the ongoing MacAir report will unfold in compact, digestible three-point installments. (Index to previous installments here.) Today's three points:

1) Is the MacAir suitable as your "real" computer? No.

OK: that's a spoiled-sounding thing to say. What I mean is that this machine is optimized for ease, convenience, and elegance as a portable computer, at the expense of features that would make it better for day-in, day-out stuck at the office use.

Most obvious illustration: this is one of the very few modern computers with no CD/DVD drive at all. (Unlike its closest PC counterpart, the new Lenovo ThinkPad X300.) You can work around that with a convenient utility to read from another machine's DVD drive, over a network -- but that means you have to have another machine. Similarly: you can work around the absence of an Ethernet port (with a separate dongle), and the presence of only one USB port, and the absence of a microphone jack. But they are workarounds, and there is no getting around the limit on the hard drive, which holds a maximum of 80GB. Not a huge amount, by today's desktop computer standards.

The MacAir remains elegant and beautiful; it has stood up well to travel (protected by this neoprene sleeve); I have no complaints about fit or finish or any other mechanical feature. But just as some resort properties are suitable mainly for those who can consider them "second homes," this is suitable mainly for people who can consider it a second computer. Though a nice one....

2) What about that battery life?

Continue reading "The next three points about MacBook Air" »

Whining for just a minute (re Citibank, Amazon)

I will get this off my chest, then back to matters of consequence:

1) A message in the inbox from Vikram Pandit! New CEO of Citibank! I have been a customer for decades, mainly because an immediate family member works there. Mr. Pandit tells me (and presumably zillions of other customers):

I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm.

Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless. My commitment - and the commitment of everyone at Citi - is to work tirelessly around the world and around the clock to deliver outstanding value and service as we continue to earn your trust.

Here's a thought: maybe as a step toward your goal you could stop charging a TWO PER CENT service fee on ATM withdrawals at Citibank's own, branded, logo'ed ATMs overseas, or at least in China. I withdraw $300 worth of RMB from my US Citibank account, at a Citibank ATM in Beijing, and a $6 fee is tacked on. I realize that "usury" is not the correct term, but it's the general idea. Please don't hold it against my family member, but my wife and I just switched to Bank of America for this precise reason. FYI for anyone in China who doesn't know this already: B of A offers zero-fee withdrawals via China Construction Bank ATMs, which are everywhere across China. This adds up.

2) Amazon's "recommendation" service has sent me a message too! It thinks that, based on my previous purchases, I might like Vienna Blood, by Frank Tallis.

Very good guess! I thought that Tallis's Death in Vienna was a great genre book! Atmosphere (Vienna, 1902); suspense; learning about something you didn't know about before (Hapsburg culture, some history-of-psychology) -- all the elements of a satisfying mystery.

Maybe this is why I already ordered this exact book Amazon is now recommending, and about ten others, when I learned on May 5 that I would be making a quick trip later in the month to the United States. All the books I ordered were listed as "in stock." Of course they'd be ready by the time I headed back to China on May 22? Right?

Sigh. Wrong. Thanks, Amazon, for the recommendation -- and for the delivery notice I got on arrival in Beijing, saying that they would arrive at my father's house in California a few days from now. I'll pick them up on my next visit in the fall.

Communicating with the customer: it doesn't always work out just the way it's foreseen.

My commitment: no more whining for six months or so.

More on Cisco and the Great Firewall

Via Wired.com two days ago, an astonishing and apparently legit internal document from Cisco back in 2002, when it was preparing to sell the Chinese government the routers that were initially necessary to make the "Great Firewall" system of internet censorship work. (My Atlantic article on how the Firewall works here; also, followup interviews with Network World and TheAtlantic.com. For the record, the official name for the firewall and related systems is not the Great Firewall but the "Golden Shield" project.)

The "To Be Sure" section:
- Cisco has always claimed, and this document supports, that it didn't tailor any of its products particularly to the Chinese government's needs. Its normal product just happened to be what the government wanted;

- Whatever Cisco did or did not do six years ago, China no longer needs any outsider's help to make the system go. As I point out in my article, China's own companies, notably Huawei, can provide everything the government requires;

- There was never very much money involved. (According to Wired, $100,000 - could it really have been so little???);

- A Cisco official told Wired that he was "appalled" and "disappointed" at what the document showed.

Still: pages 48-58 of this PDF presentation seem to remove any doubt that Cisco knew, at the time, exactly what China had in mind with the "Golden Shield" program -- and viewed it as a great business opportunity.

More on the pandas of Wolong

The main site of Pandas International has pictures and updates on damage to the Wolong panda reserve, plus rescue efforts underway:

And of course NPR's All Things Considered, which was already in Chengdu preparing for a special week of China coverage when the earthquake occurred (and has done outstanding work since then), had this good report about the pandas on its latest show.

Update: Here is another of the post-quake photos of Wolong, via Pandas International:

And here is the same enclosure late last summer:

Aviation buffs only: new model from Cirrus (updated)

The Cirrus Design company, of Duluth MN, brought its first all-new, designed-from scratch small airplane, the SR-20, to the market nearly ten years ago. Through the previous half-century, the other main manufacturers (Cessna, Beechcraft, Piper, Mooney, etc) had offered very, very gradual improvements in their propeller-plane lineup. When I was taking flight lessons a dozen years ago, I used rented Cessnas that had been built in the 1970s and designed in the 1950s.

Cirrus said that instead it would keep up a computer-industry-like pace of new products, making each existing model "obsolete" only because it kept having something better for people to buy. More or less it has lived up to that promise, with a series of improvements in engines, engineering, control systems, plus a recently announced "personal jet." (The story of Cirrus's emergence as a high-tech innovator in a previously dormant industry was part of my 2001 book Free Flight.)

This week Cirrus introduced the third fundamental redesign of its cockpit instrumentation. Its original SR-20 airplane had a then-impressive moving map system from the Arnav company. (I bought an early SR-20 in 2000 and flew it for six years, before selling it when moving to China.) Then it offered a snazzier system from Avidyne, with "Primary Flight Display" that in many ways made it easier to fly the airplane. This week it announced a complete new cockpit panel design, based on a partnership with the leading GPS company Garmin. It looks like this (click for detailed version):

Continue reading "Aviation buffs only: new model from Cirrus (updated)" »

How to find the "Envision" company of China: look for "Vision Wall"

The June issue of the Atlantic went online a few days ago. It includes a lot of great political and cultural coverage (this and this and this, among many others). I also have an article in that issue on the surprisingly positive aspects of China's generally-dire environmental situation.

Since the issue has appeared on line, I've received several queries per a day about a question I tried to answer here earlier: where to find more info on the "Envision" company that is featured in the story? This is the company that makes super-efficient window glass but has been having a hard time breaking into China's construction market. Outside China, the company is known as "Vision Wall." You can learn more and make contact here.

Hamilton Jordan

I am surprisingly moved and saddened at the news that Hamilton Jordan has died of cancer, at age 63.

Wikipedia photo of Jordan in his 30s:

Actuarially the main surprise is that he lived this long: his first serious encounter with cancer happened nearly 25 years ago, and he had many subsequent bouts. And to the extent that people remember him at all from the Jimmy Carter era (nearly half of today's living Americans had not been born at that time), they may think of him as the wise guy/bad boy of the Administration.

Compared with that image, I thought he was a surprisingly sweet-hearted, decent, and serious person.* My impression is probably colored by the career and identity he fashioned after Carter and his team were turned out of office, when Hamilton tried hard and earnestly to write serious books and grappled for years with his disease. Eight years ago I wrote this review in the Washington Monthly of one of Jordan's books, No Such Thing as a Bad Day. This ending of the review is a little crabbier-sounding than I might write today, but I still mean its basic point:

An unstated operating assumption of the permanent D.C. establishment is that outsiders like Jordan are essentially brought into town on sufferance, for tryouts. They can adapt, "make it," and survive when their time with the administration has ended--or they can be drummed out of town and dismissed as losers. In D.C. terms, Jordan was in the latter category; he worked for a losing administration, and he didn't cut it in society. Yet this book suggests that he has become a more substantial person than most who dismissed him--and even before he went through this transformation, he was a more complicated person than the "Hannibal Jerkin" caricatured in the press. This has made me think of the damage done to other people hooted out of town. (Gary Hart?) If you're thinking of a midsummer gift for a favorite columnist or Style section writer, consider this book.

I feel bad for Hamilton and his family.

---
* Jordan vastly outranked me in the Carter White House hierarchy, he as chief of staff and me as a less-influential-than-the-title-suggested head speechwriter. But he was an aspiring tennis player and I was on call as a partner and practice-player, the one time in my life that sports has provided upward mobility.

Valuable NYT story on air taxis

Today's NYT story on DayJet and other new air taxi companies makes the important point that what has slowed them at the moment is not (necessarily) a flaw in their own business model but the general collapse of the U.S. credit market. Joe Sharkey of the NYT says of Ed Iacobucci, CEO of DayJet:

Just as his company, DayJet, had proved that there was a business in using small jets for short-haul, on-demand service and was poised to expand its market, the credit market froze.... "All of the metrics are wonderful," [Iacobucci] said. "We're getting repeat buys. We're getting people paying at the price points we want. But we haven't been able to raise the capital.

In case it's not obvious, companies like DayJet need to expand to succeed because of the same network-efficiencies principles that determine the value of cell phone systems, social-networking sites, companies like FedEx and eBay, and modern networks in general. The more people who are already connected, the more attractive it becomes for each new member to join. Thus the familiar Metcalfe's Law, from Bob Metcalfe: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the users it connects.

For an air taxi company, this means: the more cities it can fly to (that is, the more "nodes" in its nework), the more attractive it becomes to new customers and the more efficiently it runs (because fewer wasted return trips and "deadheads.") That is why the DayJet plan called for adding new cities every month. And this is why, according to the DayJet officials and others, their business plan would have supported continued expansion through this year and beyond -- in "normal" credit circumstances. Their plans had allowed for oil at well over $100 a barrel -- but not for an inability to get working capital at all.

Where, when, and whether small-jet taxi services will become successful is impossible to say. But it's worth noting, as this Times story does, that the impediment to date has not been the airplanes or the cost structure or customer demand but rather the current credit freeze, and whoever you want to blame for that.

Earthquake update #4: Middle school pictures (updated in big way)

I am sure there is a limitless supply of pictures like this*, but I found this set particularly affecting because it resembled what I'd seen at other schools. This link, via a Chinese correspondent, is to a Chinese-language site that ran pictures of a Sunday sports day/fun fest at Beichuan Middle School the day before the earthquake. Beichuan was of course near the heart of the devastation, and presumably most of the people shown in these photos are lost. (See important update below.)

Here is a sample, apparently of a middle-school teacher competing with kids in a basketball-carrying stunt race:

And some of the kids taking a turn:

There are many, many more pictures of the sports day at the site -- followed by a few shots of bodies on the school yard after the earthquake. The descriptions (in Chinese) on the page talk about "Beichuan Middle School's Final Day of Smiles" etc. I include them because they are, again, true to the kind of thing I've seen in provincial China -- and different from what most Westerners imagine when they think of the country.

UPDATE: The man in the first photo is indeed a teacher, Tang Gaoping; the pictures are from his blog, which attracted wide interest in China after the earthquake. Then on Sunday, six days after the quake, it was confirmed that Tang and his students had gotten out of the rubble and were alive. Details in English here.

* Update on limitless supply of pictures: Roland Soong has posted 300 on his EastSouthWestNorth blog.

Earthquake update #3: Pandas

Earlier I mentioned reassuring first reports that the staff of the Wolong panda reserve, which was very close to the epicenter of last week's earthquake, had escaped unharmed, along with their 60+ animals.

The reports seem to have been prematurely cheering. The full extent of what has happened in Wolong, as in much of the rest of Sichuan province, is not yet clear. But Pandas International, the US-based group that I mentioned in my article last year about the panda reserve, is amassing information from the Wolong area indicating that buildings, people, and pandas probably all have suffered considerable damage. It would be remarkable if it were otherwise, considering how close to the quake center the reserve is -- and what the buildings under construction looked like when my wife and I visited last summer:

Panda International's latest reports also indicate that three of the reserve's pandas are missing. To put this in perspective: so far, no panda raised in captivity has ever survived in the wild. Also, by the most generous estimates, the world's total population of giant pandas, captive and wild, is well under 2,000. If the number of missing Chinese people were proportional to the number of missing pandas, some two million people would be unaccounted for.

I previously posted various pictures of the animals at the reserve. In light of the news that some or many of the staff members at the reserve may be killed or missing, here is a glimpse of what some of them looked like last year.

I should probably feel this way about people in every foreign country, but (as stated earlier) the truth is I mainly feel it about China; while the throngs of humanity are overwhelming, the people are vividly individual. Those at the reserve, many of whom I remember, and those in surrounding cities and schools we met.

About donations: I don't know enough about the practices of Chinese-based charities to be confident in any recommendation about good places to give. (It has been hard to go wrong with Oxfam over the years.) I am looking into this and will report further.

In the meantime, I am confident enough about the work of Pandas International to say that they have done important, worthy work and deserve support. Not to the exclusion of helping people, obviously, but as an important part of China's and the world's heritage.

Earthquake update #2: Media

Three days ago I mentioned this report from the Pew representative in Beijing (Deborah Fallows, who is also my wife) about Chinese media play on the earthquake.

Here is her followup report on Pew's site, about Chinese TV and internet coverage through the three-minute national period of mourning today.

Earthquake update #1: USGS

Via Tom Hill, whose first-day account from Chengdu I mentioned here, and also Edward Goldstick, this map from the U.S. Geological Survey showing peak-intensity shaking areas during last week's earthquake:

That USGS page has links to many other revealing and sobering maps, for instance this one about population exposure during the earthquake.

It is also worth comparing the peak-intensity map to this one, from Pandas International, showing the location of panda reserves and remaining wild panda territory.

Technology, not politics

Andrew Sullivan asks in his blog a question several readers have asked me (as well as him) directly: Why is his part of the Atlantic blog empire blocked by the Great Firewall of China, while the rest of the Atlantic's site, archives, photos, comments, etc is not?

I love the idea that discerning Communist cadres in Beijing have pored over and parsed everything in the magazine and determined that Andrew's posts are in some basic way more threatening to the regime's long-term legitimacy -- they're betting on Hillary? -- than anything else the magazine serves up. Alas, there's a prosaic and purely mechanical explanation.

For legacy reasons -- ie, his long pre-Atlantic blog existence -- Andrew's blog is hosted on an different system from everything else displayed on TheAtlantic.com. The system Andrew uses is one of several that are subject to blanket black-outs by the Great Firewall; the one that hosts the rest of the magazine is not. Andrew, come join us on the new system! Andrew's aspiring readers in China: try a VPN!

I think of the following episode when considering the how and why of Chinese press-control policy: A few months ago I ran into a man who was operating a fairly daring museum, which had many relics from the Cultural Revolution. I asked him whether the government was giving him trouble. "The government is busy," he said. Saves time just to turn whole web domains on and off.

What was John McCain thinking?

An advantage of being in the US again for a few days: seeing shows in real time, specifically SNL just now. What on earth was John McCain thinking, in agreeing to do a SNL spot 35 minutes into the show? The run-into-the-ground "joke" line was, "I am older than anyone can possibly believe. Hardee-har! I am so incredibly old!" Jeesh. He came across as a good sport, but, well, old. Everyone has seen SNL items that could be used as campaign ads. This is the only one I can think of where a candidate intentionally produced something that could be used as an attack ad on himself.

My immediate reaction while watching it is: if the Democrats ever move past their current intra-party bloodletting,the election might not turn out to be that close.

Pew blog on Chinese media coverage of earthquake

I am out of China for a few more days. While away I have seen this report on the Pew Research Center site, from the head of the Pew Research Internet Project's China operation, on what she is seeing about the earthquake on Chinese TV and reading on the internet.

(Disclosure: the author is my wife.)

My three computers (MacBook Air saga, cont..)

Three months into my use and ownership of both a MacBook Air and a Mac Mini, and nearly 30 years into my use and ownership of computers in the CP/M -> DOS -> Windows lineage, I keep waiting for the moment to give a "complete" and panoramic view of the pluses and minuses of each approach.

That moment will never come. So I will resume the piecemeal descriptions offered before (here and in previous installments).

For reference: my three-working-computer setup here at Beijing HQ, in a posed but not entirely unrepresentative configuration. On the left: venerable Thinkpad T60 running Vista and a zillion Windows-style programs. On the right: the MacBook Air in all its svelteness. In between, a Mac Mini, connected to a big flat-panel display and a Mac-style aluminum keyboard.

I still use all of them, through day by day the trend is, ratchet-like, in the Mac direction. I wouldn't be embarrassed to have a multi-system life for quite a while ahead, since each has its strengths --and since I don't regard this as a religious or cultural all-or-nothing decision. As soon as I even think about trying to present the ins and outs of each system, I get nervous about what a long chore that would be. (Also, I know that David Alison's excellent blog has over the last few months chronicled in exquisite detail every shift, surprise, irritation, how-to, and satisfaction he has gone through during his switch to the Mac.)

So I'll make this manageable by doling out three or four points per post, which cumulatively may someday represent the complete Mac/PC almanac so many people dream of.

Today's three points:

Continue reading "My three computers (MacBook Air saga, cont..)" »

Burma background (updated)

Once again I must unavoidably be on the road, and away in particular from Chinese earthquake news and coverage, for the next six days.

In the meantime let me highlight and commend a series of articles from a Special Supplement on Burma that the Atlantic published in .... 1958.

That year our magazine published a 72-page section of perspectives on this one little country (the magazine biz was a little different in those days....), mainly written by Burmese themselves. Many addressed questions of national character, historic memory, the role of religion, etc that remain important today. Five of these essays, for a start, are now on line. Just because I know the Burmese-American novelist Wendy Law Yone, I point out that one is by her father, the prominent Burmese journalist U Law Yone.

It's a credit to the magazine that we published this material in the first place (under Edward Weeks, editor in those palmy days) and that, thanks to hard, fast work by Sage Stossel, Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, and the Atlantic team of interns (Ben Carlson, Conor Friedersdorf, Theodore Kahn, Herschel Nachlis, Sara Tisdale), so much of this material went from printed form on crinkly 50-year-old paper to being digitized and online within about one day. I believe that more of it is to come. James Gibney's accompanying overview of the subject also is extremely good.

We hope this material is useful for Westerners trying to learn more about the country -- and, significantly, for members of the large English-speaking Burmese diaspora around the world, most of whom would never have seen these essays before.

Update: 16 articles now on line. Really, what can be found in the Atlantic's archives is incredible.

Masses, and individuals, in China

The human scale of almost anything in China is predictably shocking. I go to a city I'd never heard of -- say, Zibo -- and learn that it has about as many people as Chicago. I go to a city I have heard of and learn that estimates of its population are accurate only within a couple million. And of course we now have the staggering figures coming out from Sichuan province and its surroundings -- about 900 children trapped in one school, tens of thousands missing in another town, whole villages being swallowed up by landslides. America has never known mass tragedy on this scale -- or even on a pro-rated version of this scale. China has of course known it many times.

Here is a classroom picture from last fall, at a high school outside Sichuan province but close to the earthquake zone. These are the kinds of schools and classrooms you're seeing in "after" pictures now. (Yes, there is a ringer in this picture, whom I couldn't photo-shop out.) These are the kinds of children who have been affected.

Here, from a middle school, is a dormitory room where 18 girls sleep each night and eat all their meals. They sleep side by side, nine on the bottom bunk and nine on the top, with their heads to the left of the picture and their feet to the center. All of their clothes and belongings are in the gray lockers in the right background.

Some of the students at that school. Although multi-child families are more common in rural areas than in the cities, most of the children involved in the earthquake would have been their parents' only child.:

The masses in China are overwhelming; the people in them are vividly and irrepressibly individual. Via Rebecca MacKinnon, here are some ways to contribute to relief efforts in China.

Three more views (last, for now) on DayJet and air taxis

As advertised a while ago, here are excerpts from three additional and, to people following the story, intriguing perspectives on the potential of air-taxi services like DayJet and the problems DayJet itself has just encountered.

The long, detailed, and very-interesting-to-those-who-are-interested full documents come after the jump. Here's the gist, Executive Summary style:

#1 is from a inactive private pilot and very active airline passenger named John Schubert, who argues that air-taxi services like DayJet are already becoming so threatening to the major "legacy" airlines that the airline companies are fighting back as hard as they can, through lobbying and PR.

#2 is from a currently active private pilot and "serial entrepreneur" named Drew Eginton, who argues that DayJet tried to do too much too fast ("hypergrowth," was the term I quoted in my story") rather than expanding more cautiously. He also says that more attention should be paid to a controversial German aviation company named Thielert, which is embroiled in fraud charges now but in principle could have made, and might still, a big difference in air travel.

#3 is from the retired air traffic controller and "Get the Flick" blogger Don Brown, who says that in addition to consulting Russian mathematicians, "ant farmers" [see the story], etc, DayJet should have been sure to include air traffic controllers in its startup team.
To this one I have an answer: My story was long as published, but it started out a couple thousand words longer. Part of what melted away was a description of DayJet's successful interactions with local ATC officials. The key to the success was that DayJet planned -- and plans -- to go where the existing airlines don't; so if a route is already crowded, by definition that's a reason

All the details below.
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Continue reading "Three more views (last, for now) on DayJet and air taxis" »

Great Firewall slideshow

Yesterday I mentioned that Network World had run a Q&A (with me) about how the Great Firewall of China does and doesn't work. Just now they've put up a nice conceptual slide show on "How the Chinese Internet is Different from Yours," here. Worth a look, and includes at least one thing I didn't know before.

Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu

After the break, two first-person accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath, from foreigners in Chengdu. These are long and, to me, vivid in their detail, but skip past if you're not interested. I'm providing them here for real-time documentary purposes.
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Continue reading "Earthquake accounts from foreigners in Chengdu" »

Pre-quake scenes of Sichuan province

Last summer, from villages in the hills of Sichuan province near the center of yesterday's earthquake. These are the kinds of people who have been affected:

1) Ethnic Tibetan children playing on the way home from school (click for larger):

2) Other children getting a ride home in a truck:

3) Men waiting for a bus:

4) Dr. Tang Chunxiang, who has lived at the panda reserve in Wolong for more than 20 years and who told me, "The more I know the panda, the more I love the panda." As best I know, there has been no communication with that reserve since the earth quake -- road blocked, telephone and internet lines down, wireless phone coverage out. Update: according to CCTV at 7:30pm China time, the pandas in a base outside Chengdu, and their care-takers are fine, but there are not yet reports from the main panda reserve in Wolong.

Interview about Great Firewall in Network World

In the new issue of the tech journal Network World, I have this Q-and-A, with Carolyn Duffy Marsan, about the workings, weaknesses, and evolution of China's "Great Firewall," expanding on this article in the Atlantic two months back.

Earthquake coverage on Chinese TV

Most of the channels on the (state controlled) CCTV are running the normal game shows, Olympic warmups (especially torch-relay updates), teen music shows, etc. But the CCTV-1 news channel is having all-out coverage of the earthquake in Sichuan province. Brief cultural notes:

- The coverage included a long segment of premier Wen Jiabao reading a speech about his deep concern for the people of Sichuan, from aboard an airplane en route to the disaster scene. Background: after the country was paralyzed by unexpected snow storms in February, the leadership was criticized for a Katrina-like slowness in dealing with the problem. Prominent coverage now of the main officials responding immediately to this disaster.

- News channels from Taiwan, which we are watching in alternation with the mainland coverage on CCTV, have extensive video footage from Chengdu, estimates of casualties, etc. So far no on-scene video footage that I've seen on CCTV-1, and no casualty figures. (The state news agency, Xinhua, is saying that 7600 people, or more, may have died.) Channel-surfing, we see that the German, Japanese, and Korean networks are also running Chengdu footage. It could have been on CCTV when I wasn't watching, but it's certainly not featured. CCTV is mainly running telephone interviews with correspondents in Sichuan and talking-head analyses in the studio. Possible background: controlling coverage within China until being sure exactly how the story should be presented. (Update: just saw a 20-second video clip from Chengdu on CCTV.)

- To help place this disaster: it is in almost exactly the same area I described in this article about the Wolong Panda Reserve, northwest of Chengdu, and this slide show about the reserve. A long, twisty road from Chengdu to Wolong, which had been undergoing years of reconstruction, passes right through the earthquake area. I assume it could be a long time before it is restored to even its perilous previous condition.

Good luck to all in Sichuan, including Dr. Tang Chunxiang and his colleagues in Wolong.

Earthquake in China

I previously had posted a quick item about the minor disruption in Beijing this afternoon after the earthquake hundreds of miles away in Sichuan. In light of the emerging reports of possible large loss of life, including children, I thought it was better to remove that and simply express sympathies for these latest probably-rural, probably-poor victims of natural calamity.

Evil in Burma

I have not said anything about the disaster in Burma, because I haven't had anything to say beyond "It's a disaster." And, that people should call the country Burma -- as the Bush Administration, Senators Clinton, McCain*, and Obama, and the Washington Post do -- rather than Myanmar, the term chosen by its junta and now accepted by CNN, NPR, and the New York Times.

My wife and I have been to Burma several times over the last twenty years. The first time was in the summer of 1988, around the time of the August 8 uprising and subsequent bloody repression of monks and students. The most recent was a little more than a year ago, a few days before another bloody round of repression. Like almost everyone who has been in the country, we have viewed its regime as a peculiarly pre-modern and backward form of evil. It does not seems capable of thoroughly-organized evil and repression, as in the old Soviet system. Rather it displays a benighted, superstitious, and almost unthinking indifference to whether its people suffer and die.

A minor illustration would be the decision that effectively bankrupted many Burmese people and helped bring on riots 20 years ago. This was the out of the blue decree that most denominations of Burmese currency, except those in "lucky" denominations like 45 and 90 kyat, would be valueless. The major illustration is of course its refusal to allow relief workers from around the world to spare tens of thousands of Burmese people disease and likely death in the wake of the cyclone.

Unfortunately, saying that the regime is evil doesn't automatically indicate how to help its unfortunate people. Invasions -- even for humanitarian purposes -- should be a very last resort. And without spelling out the whole reasoning, the U.S. is not in a great position now to be organizing an international invasion force, no matter how noble the cause. As the international frustrations of the last week have suggested, the main option is the unsatisfying one of putting together as much pressure from as many sources as possible, including China**, to force the regime away from its outrageous refusal to allow aid workers in.

(*About McCain: if it really is true that he has given a major convention role to a lobbyist who represented the Burmese junta, McCain needs to dump that person forthwith -- or be pilloried for not doing so every day between now and the election. Update: I see that the lobbyist, Doug Goodyear, has just quit the convention job. Next, maybe giving back the $300,000+ the generals paid him, to a human rights group? **About China: the latest outrage by the Burmese generals should not become the latest reason to threaten China with an Olympic boycott or disruption. The Chinese government has some influence over the Burmese regime -- but just some. It is better to make China part of the solution to this problem, by pointing out that a regime's refusal to save its own people is the strongest possible reason for an exception in China's "non-interference with other sovereign states" doctrine.)

A year ago, during the time of riots and crackdowns, I posted several pictures of what Rangoon looked like just before the fighting began. Here and after the jump, a few other pictures from that time.

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1: Village on the Irrawaddy delta, south of Rangoon, showing why a storm surge would do such damage. (Click for larger version that shows pagoda):

Continue reading "Evil in Burma" »

Correct link for VisionWall/Envision -- in China environment article

The June issue of the Atlantic has started to reach subscribers. Not me in China yet, and not a number of friends who've written to ask about it. But enough to remind me to add one point of clarification.

In this issue I have a long narrative article called "China's Silver Lining," arguing a case I had not at all expected to argue before trekking across the country to see a variety of anti-pollution efforts. The argument, in brief, is that the environmental situation here is less uniformly disastrous than most outside discussion assumes -- and that recognizing where, why and how much it is improving (and where it isn't) is crucial for taking the next big steps forward. Those next big steps, in turn, are necessary so that Chinese industrialization doesn't kill everyone in China and half the people in the rest of the world.

You can judge for yourself. (Subscribers will get it in the next few days; online edition goes up in a couple of weeks.) Here is the additional info I am thinking of:

In the article I tell the story of a Canadian-based company whose Chinese operation is called Envision, and which is making a radically more energy-efficient form of window glass. Unglamorous innovations of this sort are significant because Chinese buildings standards have been so grossly inefficient that it takes dramatically more energy to heat or cool a new building in Shanghai or Beijing than its counterpart in a similar weather zone in Europe or North America. Thus merely installing different glass could, over time, spare China the need to burn millions of tons of coal.

The window company I'm mentioning is a small part of a larger drama, and I am not trying to advertise it in particular. Several people have asked how to find out more about it, which might not be obvious from the story. Outside China, it is known by the name VIsionWall, and its site is here. FWIW.

New, "official" GTD blog site

Two or three years ago, David Allen, father of the "Getting Things Done"/GTD approach to life, started a personal blog. He kept it up for a couple of months and then, no doubt realizing that this kind of daily fritter was at odds with his larger message about sensible use of your time, put it to sleep. (My 2004 Atlantic article about David Allen here; recent item about GTD-type software here.)

In the absence of blog-world messages from The Man himself, many other GTD-related blogs have continued to spring up. That's all to the good -- but a few weeks ago Allen and his team launched their own blog, straight from GTD Central. It is called GTDTimes and is worth checking out.

Free book idea: the torch

I hope some energetic writer is working on a short narrative book about China, centered on the world pre-Games tour of the Olympic torch. Unexpectedly the tour has turned out to be a vehicle for getting at countless important and interesting themes about the country. The ways in which it has "arrived," and the ways in which it hasn't. What it understands about the outside world, and what it obviously doesn't. What the outside world, in turn, perceives and mis-perceives about China. The role of genuine nationalistic pride, and of government-engineered nationalism. And much more.

At least if I thought such a book was coming out, it would be a reason not to scream each time I come across the CCTV channel that seems to be devoting 24/7 coverage to the torch, as it makes its way through a new city in China every day from now until the opening ceremony on August 8.

Two images to get the research going. The first, as specimen coverage, is the front page of today's China Daily, noting the torch's ascent of Mt. Everest. The second, via my friend Liam Casey in Shenzhen, is the crowd that greeted the torch there -- and Shenzhen, remember, is a city that is geographically and culturally about as far distant from Beijing as you can find in China, the far-southern outpost of pure manufacturing-based market-mindedness. If this many people are being let off from the factories, something is going on.

Academics, journalists, belle-lettrists -- it's open to anyone. If you do write the book, please just mention me on the "I'd like to thank..." page.

#1: China Daily, today.

#2: Shenzhen, yesterday:

For the record, more views on DayJet

After the jump, via general-aviation news central here at its temporary HQ in Shaanxi province, China, another perspective on the DayJet situation. (Original Atlantic article here; recent news updates here and here.)

This is from Bruce Holmes, a prominent figure in my story (and in my 2001 book Free Flight, about the innovations that gave rise to Day Jet, SATSair, and similar companies.). He presents the "slowdown in growth is good for long-term success" outlook. Several other interesting items have arrived, which I'll add after I check with the senders to make sure they're meant for "publication."

Continue reading "For the record, more views on DayJet" »

The China price (updated)

The pots are about four inches tall, and quite solidly made. Empty ones could serve as nice little vases or general knick-knacks and could easily go for a dollar or two apiece, or more, in a U.S. housewares store. Here each yogurt plus its pot costs two and a half RMB (35 US cents). It's either two RMB (28 cents) for the yogurt and one-half RMB (7 cents) for the pot, or vice versa. My wife didn't remember which the sign said. We're building up quite a supply. Maybe the foundation of a specialty-import business if we can get them back to America? The spirit of Chinese entrepreneurialism is infectious.

Update: Several correspondents have usefully pointed out that the pots can be returned for a deposit, just like beer bottles. Makes sense! It turns out that my wife knew this (I have never bought them myself) but just didn't mention it to me! Now I know -- the real communications problems are within one language, not across language boundaries -- and we can haul a bunch of them back to the store for pockets full of cash.

Further, and more positive, on the DayJet story

Thanks to my friend Mary Grady of AVweb, an update -- and a somewhat brighter perspective -- about yesterday's news on layoffs at DayJet. The update, from AVweb's Russ Niles, here.

It includes, among a lot of other material, this point, very consistent with what I reported in my current Atlantic piece:

There is a business there. Iacobucci [Ed Iacobucci, CEO of DayJet] signed up 1,500 members, more than 500 actually flew and 50 flew more than 10 times. Whether it can survive fuel prices, the vagaries of the economy and the inevitable attack from the airlines if it gets too successful are questions that will be answered as the company progresses.

There is so much talent, of so many different forms, at the company that I give them the benefit of the doubt.

Nerds only: pulling the plug on Xobni

I mentioned two days ago that I'd liked the idea of the spiffy Outlook-indexer Xobni, but that when I'd tried a beta version in January it had slowed my PC to a point of paralysis.

The new release has been getting a lot of buzz, so I thought I'd try it again.

No dice. After two days of torpor I have just taken it off the machine. Made the already-glacial startup process of Outlook (under Vista) almost interminable. Used so many CPUs and -- especially -- so much memory that the computer wasn't good for anything else. Could just be me. Could just be my computer. Could be the evil Vista (on the computer where I installed Xobni). Could be entirely different for you. Just reporting my experience.

And maybe it's not just me. When you uninstall Xobni, it asks you why. The choices:

"Please tell us why you uninstalled so we can improve:
" 1. I wasn't using it.
" 2. It used too many computer resources
" 3. Outlook froze during normal operation
" 4. It made Outlook startup too slow.
" 5. Sidebar disappeared or stopped loading
" 6. It slowed down my Outlook.
" 7. I just temporarily uninstalled and will reinstall.
" 8. It did not index my mail properly
" 9. Outlook crashed"

I checked 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9. But when they have a new version...

A gracious note from Hillary Clinton (updated)

Despite the opening crack about Indiana as a "tie-breaker" and the "this will really look bad in the history books" hammering on the gas-tax holiday as the big issue for America, I thought that was a surprisingly gracious-toned and party-spirited "victory" speech by Hillary Clinton just now. Few gratuitous digs at Obama; actually mentioning his victory in another state, which she has often spitefully refused to do; going out of her way to say that she would work for Democratic victory no matter who is the nominee (as she expected Obama would); and a valedictory-gratitude tone to those who have supported her.

Sen. Clinton's ability to take radically different tones day by day -- "I'm so proud to be here with Barack Obama" one day and "Shame on you, Barack Obama" the next -- is generally not such a charming trait. But here she showed its main advantage: conceivably it will allow her to turn on a dime and sound just as sincere in stumping for an Obama-led Democratic ticket in the fall as she has sounded in each of her manifestations through the primary campaign.

(And, yes, I mean to say "just as sincere" rather than "sincere," "fully sincere," etc.)

PS: Bonus points to her for saying "Burma," not Myanmar. PS #2: I see that my colleague Andrew S. sees this a different way. Hey, diversity in Atlantic-blog world.

UPDATE: Obviously this counts as gracious only if she follows the logic of the results and leaves the race now, or at least calls off the kind of campaigning that does the Republicans' work for them.

Not about NC/Indiana: significant air-taxi update

The excellent industry newsletter AVweb has just reported that DayJet, subject of this story in the current Atlantic, is scaling back expansion plans and laying off (an undisclosed number of) employees. Here is the story from AVweb:

Start-up air taxi operator Dayjet has announced it will "scale back" its immediate growth plans and lay off employees in all areas of its operations. In an email release today, company founder and CEO Ed Iacobucci did not detail the numbers of people let go. Iacobucci blamed weak capital markets and not the company's early performance for the decision. He said expanding the company to the point of profitability would require a $40 million capital infusion and he apparently couldn't find that money. "I won't dwell on this point, but suffice it to say that given the current state of the U.S. capital markets, the timing of our planned financing could not have been worse," he said.

Iacobucci said the "proof-of-concept phase" the company is now in has proved the market is there for the small-jet people mover system he envisioned but it has to grow from its current fleet of 28 aircraft serving 11 "Dayports" to as many as 50 aircraft branching out from up to 30 hubs to be profitable and that's why it needed the $40 million. While DayJet seems confident that it will eventually find the money and markets it needs, the larger question might be what the delay in doing so will do to Eclipse Aviation. DayJet is reported to be Eclipse's largest customer with orders for 1,400 of the estimated 2,500 aircraft on Eclipse's order book. Calls requesting comment from Eclipse were not immediately returned.

When I was at the DayJet headquarters three and a half months ago, the company was hiring like crazy and talking about its month-by-month expansion plans in cities served, passengers carried, and aircraft in the fleet. At the time it had five (I think) "DayPort" centers -- bases from which flights go to a variety of smaller cities. Apparently it has now grown to 11 DayPort centers serving 60-plus cities. The plan that was laid out to me was to get to 30 DayPorts serving 100-plus cities by the end of the year.

Whether this is a "growth slowdown" or an actual cutback, and what it portends, I obviously don't know. For now just passing on the news.

The horror

CCTV just ran a news feature on the nightmare possibility that someone might copy the official broadcast of Olympic events and then distribute it in a pirated or unauthorized form. The newscaster pointed out that this would be in flagrant disregard of the intellectual property rights of the Beijing Olympics themselves and of CCTV, the official broadcaster.

I can barely imagine the horror of some group in China copying someone else's proprietary material and distributing it outside the proper channels.

(Below, from the latest trip to the local video store. Click for larger version.)

Nerds only: Giving Xobni another try (Updated)

Back in January I tried the beta version of Xobni*-- a new system for indexing and arraying your email within Outlook that is now getting a lot of attention, thanks to a rave in the NYT yesterday. (Or, "this morning," US time.)

In the beta version, I found it so incredibly CPU-intensive and greedy for system resources that it brought my PC (ThinkPad T60, 2Gb RAM, 4GB "ReadyBoost" RAM supplement) nearly to a halt. True, this ThinkPad was running the hated Windows Vista at the time, so it was looking for any excuse to halt. And true, I was asking it to index many GBs worth of old Outlook .PST files. But I unloaded Xobni, thinking: wouldn't it be nice if this actually worked.

Several friends say that the new version works better. We'll see. And this note is also a teaser for the omnibus, final MacAir / MacMini / ThinkPad compare-and-contrast exercise later this week.

UPDATE: Xobni still breaks my T60 laptop. Consumes so many CPU cycles and memory that everything else stops. Will un-install, reinstall, and try one more time.

* Xobni's name has the same etymology as that of Shanghai's beloved local beer, REEB. Reeb is of course "beer" spelled backward, and...

"Stupidest policy ever" contest results

Hundreds of entries later, the results are clear. An absolute majority of contestants spoke in favor of ... mandates and subsidies for ethanol use as the stupidest manifestation of bipartisan public policy in the last 50 years.

There could have been a recent-events bias in this choice. (We all think that today's athletes are "the best ever," and so too with stupid policy decisions.) Still, the sentiment was strong, and so was the reasoning. I quote from the lucky subscription-to-the-Atlantic winner, Justin Cohen, who himself begins by quoting his father Reuben Cohen on the stupid aspects of this policy. The Cohen-Cohen team is chosen winner because they entered early, and because I have decided to show a bias in favor of collaborative family efforts:

"I think bi-partisan support for ethanol is more stupid [than the McCain-Clinton 'gas tax holiday' plan], because it's actually harmful and because it not only panders to the public ... worse it panders to a special interest group (Midwest farmers and their regional politicians).

It's harmful because: 1) it helped to catalyze higher levels of food inflation, 2) it consumes as much energy to make and distribute as it provides, 3) it deflects attention from developing trying sound policies to enhance our energy security, 4) it didn't allow for removal of taxes on the import of truly energy efficient ethanol produced in Brazil from sugar, and 5) it's a such an extreme example of government disfuntionality it causes people like me to become truly disillusioned with the political process."

I would add on my own that, to my limited understanding, most of the money for ethanol goes to large corporate farms and trickles down and around through agro-business, with only minimal impact on small family farmers (the ones our politicians claim to support), making the whole venture politically disingenuous in addition to economically-unsound and environmentally dubious.

After the jump, a list of some other popular nominees. Where I can think of some reason why a particular suggestion didn't end up the winner, I include that in parentheses. Thanks to all! And God help our country.

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Air-taxi update, propeller plane division

My article on DayJet in the current Atlantic is about an air taxi service that uses new, efficient, relatively cheap small jets.

For several years, other air taxi companies have opened up using new, efficient, and relatively fast and comfortable small propeller planes, notably the four-seat Cirrus SR-22.

I've paid particular attention to SATSAir, which like DayJet is based in the Southeast. This week it announced that it had flown 16,000 such Cirrus trips in 2007, a 60% increase over the year before. Its press release made a point similar to what I heard at DayJet:

Traditionally, the use of the air cab service has been a remedy for driving trips of 2-5 hours, not a replacement for other forms of air travel. However, 2007 saw a shift with a significant number of new SATSair customers using the point-to-point air cab operation as a solution to their hub-and-spoke airline frustrations and woes, in fact decreasing the door to door travel times.

Several economists and aviation experts have written me to say that, in principle, the air taxi model just can't work in the long run. Too expensive; market too small; and so on. Could be. I'm just reporting that at several companies it's working now.

Real-time report: Olympic ticket-ordering system

There are various ways in which China will be tested to see if it is "ready" to host the Olympics. For instance:
- buildings, venues, stadiums -- these are well underway, they look impressive from the outside, and everyone seems to assume they'll be great;
- physical infrastructure: the new terminal at Beijing's airport has just opened, countless subway stops are scheduled to open in time for the games, I would imagine that this has been well-planned and will work out;
- social infrastructure: posters appear every day reminding people to spit less, stand in line more, be gracious hosts, etc. There's a big push that seems to have a willing spirit behind it. Over the months I have encountered exactly one Beijing taxi driver who knew more English than I know Chinese, but a big effort in teaching taxicab English is reportedly underway. And all subway lines have signs and announcements in English as well as Chinese.
- natural environment: here's hoping!

Then there is the general and hard-to-pin down question of simply handling the Olympic-scale volume -- for traffic, crowd control, whatever. One proxy is the system for ordering Olympic tickets. Residents of China (foreign and Chinese) had their third opportunity to order tickets starting at 9am China time today -- 45 minutes ago as I write. My wife and I are trying to order some tickets to the rowing events, where (a) huge numbers of tickets are available, and (b) we have some friends involved in the competition. After the jump, a real-time chronicle of how it's going.

(Update: summary of chronicle below is that two and a half hours after the experiment began, the transaction failed and the web site invited me to try again from the start. Five hours after that, at the end of its first business day of operation, the system still wasn't working. Obviously the ticket system is overwhelmed by the volume of traffic coming at it all at once. But that brings us back to the original question about being ready to handle the predictably huge, surge-style peaks of Olympic-related volume. We'll see...)

Extra-final update: Success! At 6:45pm China time, only nine hours and forty-five minutes after first logging on, I landed three bargain seats for the rowing heats, @ 20RMB ($2.85 -- the 30RMB seats must have been sold out). End of the chronicle.
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Beijing must-see: "Tibet of China, Past and Present"

This week the "Cultural Palace of Nationalities" in Beijing -- 民族文化宫 in Chinese, also known as "Cultural Palace of Minorities" -- opened an exhibit on the history and future of Tibet. Let me just say: if you want a quick but thorough immersion in the prevailing Chinese view of this issue, you could do far worse than to spend an hour or two here.

The historical part goes under the general heading "The Feudal Serfdom of Old Tibet." The narrative introduction begins, "Before 1959, Tibet was a feudal society of serfdom, darker and more backward than European slavery in the Middle Ages." The more contemporary part is under headings like "New Tibet Changing with Each Passing Day" and "Emancipated Serfs Become Masters of Their Homeland."

As documentation for the historical perspective, the hundreds of pictures in the exhibit include some of tortured serfs from the old days, and a photo of what appear to be two nearly-whole human skins -- one of an adult, one of a child -- from what is described as a human sacrifice of serfs in the olden days. (I'm just telling you what's in the exhibit, and I am not including a photo of this item.) For the modern part, there are pictures of the progress and prosperity of today's Tibet. Here is a modern Tibetan herder, with a fridge full of beer:

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Shorter version of preceding "Outlook flaw" post

Based on all available feedback, the problem is not that I'm missing some tweak or setting in Outlook. It's that the program has a basic design flaw in the way it handles "all day events" -- for instance, St. Patrick's Day occurring on March 17.

Apparently Outlook provides no way to assign that event to the entire day itself. It is designed to assign it to a 24-hour span, so whenever you change time zones, you're screwed. The 24 hours that had run midnight-to-midnight now go 3am-to-3am. This is a design decision worthy of Clippy in its user-unfriendliness.

Oh well. Now at least I know. But please, Microsoft folk, can't you do better than this?

UPDATE: Here's what is really objectionable about Outlook's approach. The system's display suggests that there IS a difference between an "all-day appointment," like St. Patrick's Day being on March 17, and a 24-hour appointment running, say, 1am to 1am. The all-day event displays as a single line on your calendar; the 24-hour appointment spreads across every one of the hours included. But in their underlying architecture, it appears that there is no difference at all. An "all-day" event is just another 24-hour span, which happens to display as a single line if you're in the same time zone you were when you created it. To the best of my knowledge, this is different from how, for instance, Google Calendar handles the issue: GC treats "all-day" events as conceptually separate from other 24-hour appointments. The Outlook design decision seems unwise to me, because of the frustrations it creates. But its display decision goes beyond being unwise to being outright deceptive, since it suggests a distinction that the program itself does not support. (It would be as if Word, in certain conditions, displayed a passage in italics, when really the words were all stored as plain text.) Can't someone on the Office team do better than this?

Nerds only: There has to be a fix for this flaw in Outlook, right???? (Updated)

Here is something that has driven me crazy about Outlook for the ten-plus years I've used it. I can't really believe it's insoluble, because that would mean that the program has a more glaringly troublesome defect than others we know about. But I haven't found the solution -- and I'll offer the traditional bonus of a year's subscription to the Atlantic to the first person who can tell me the answer, which I'll share. (Sincerity alert: these are actual paid-out-of-my-pocket bonuses, not company freebies.)

The problem involves Outlook's handling of time zones.

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Bright side #5: interesting GTD software, including for Mac

I am a long-standing devotee of the David Allen "Getting Things Done" (GTD) approach to life, as I first described in this Atlantic article about him four years ago. We've become friends and stayed in touch since then too, which at least for me has been very enjoyable. Plus, since long before the Atlantic wrote about him he has been a loyal subscriber!

The GTD Way mainly involves habits of mind and action, but it also places a lot of emphasis on having the right tools, gizmos, and gimmicks to support those habits. Over the years I've used a variety of software to set up GTD-based systems on my computer. Ones I've liked include Results Manager and Chandler. The one I keep coming back to for my own purposes, more than a dozen years after I started using it, is the idiosyncratic but powerful Zoot. Zoot is PC-only, and for that matter text-only (no graphics etc), but it runs flawlessly on a Mac under VMWare Fusion.

Here are three more to bear in mind, with different strengths and idiosyncracies of their own:

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"Stupidest policy ever" contest interim update

Swamped with very good -- ie, very stupid -- nominees. Tabulation of suggestions, which I found interesting in their breadth, and announcement of gala prizes as soon as I can manage. Thanks all around. Though this makes me feel somewhat worse about the achievements of American democracy.

The bright side #4: Why I've missed the (English-language) Chinese press

May 1 edition, China Daily, state-controlled voice to the outside world:

Headline, in case you can't read it: "Happiness abounds as country cheers." (Click on photo for larger version.) Lead paragraph: "Across the country, people yesterday celebrated the 100-day countdown to the Olympics." Picture is of Tibetan university students in Lhasa rejoicing.

There are serious aspects to the enormous gap between Chinese and international coverage of the Olympics, Tibet, etc -- but for another time. For now it's great to see these publications in top form.