Strategic News Service^® Blog

A New Kind of Computing

May 8th, 2008

Tonight I’ve published a suggestion / proposal for a new model for computing, based on how the cell works, so I’ve called it Cellular Computing.

SNS members will be reading about it within the hour.  The idea is that we have nearly reached the end of the old linear/multi-linear model, with its one set of top-down instructions in numbered or ordered lines. 

If you think about how the cell relates to internal and external change, and how its control systems function and integrate, you’ll see a brand new model for computing, with new questions, new controls, and new definitions of solutions.

Rather than study how the brain works, it might be smarter for computer architects to study how the cells of the brain (or any other organ) work.

A Different View of the Tibet Riots and Chinese Response

May 3rd, 2008

I’ve just come back from a couple of days with our staff and selected members of the Future in Review Advisory Board, including Russ Daggatt, past CEO of Teledesic, ICO and New ICO, author of a book on international negotiation, and current founding partner of Denny Street Capital; and Sidney Rittenberg, author of “The Man Who Stayed Behind,” a book I recommend to all friends and colleagues interested in China.

Russ and his family had recently been to Dharamsala, have visited earlier with the Dalai Lama’s brother at their home in Idaho, and had the chance while overseas to talk with some of the hundreds of Tibetan refugees coming into Dharamsala from their homeland.  Russ’ wife, Gemma, was an instrumental organizer of the “Seeds of Compassion” series of meetings and talks with the Dalai Lama in Seattle just weeks ago.

Sidney had just returned to the U.S. from China a couple of weeks ago.  He has personally known every Chinese leader since Mao, whose friendship led to two terms of solitary confinement in China jails totalling sixteen years.  He (and his daughter Jenny and their sons) spends all of this time working through Rittenberg Associates to bring American and Chinese businesses closer together, and, specifically, to help U.S. tech firms gain a footing in China.

Russ’ attitude about Tibet (and I do not in any way claim to be speaking for either him or for Sidney) seems to be what most of us have heard in the Western media: that China has had a long program aimed at destruction of the Tibetan culture, and that the recent riots included the killing of many (unnumbered) innocent Tibetans.

Sidney, on the other hand, seemed to feel that China was being misrepresented in the Western media, and had acted with amazing restraint in Lhasa during the riots, with the result that perhaps zero Tibetans had been killed, while many Chinese had been killed and injured.  He seemed to think that most of this mayhem was caused by young gangs, and not by Tibetan monks (a line seemingly different from the current Government line).

Sidney had talked with the only Western journalist (perhaps accidentally) allowed into Lhasa during the riots to obtain this view.  He works for the Economist, and his story is here:

http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875823

I’ve read the story. It sounds credible, and comes from a credible source. What one cannot tell, with only a single journalist on the scene, is what happened that he may not have seen, like the description of Tibetans being dragged out into the street, beaten, and driven off, with the street then covered in “something white” to cover the blood.

I thought, given the Economist’s perspective on this, that it was worth sharing. It does nothing to detract from the Tibetans’ desire for autonomy, as publicly stated by the Dalai Lama, or as appears to be the subject of discussion in just-arranged talks between the two parties in China, going on now.

The Tibetans are smart enough to understand the Chinese’ PR vulnerabilities as the Olympics approach; they are nearly invisible to the world, and to leverage vs. China, at any other time. Conversely, even if the Chinese have been restrained in their dealing with the protests, it remains to be seen if those 100+ who have been rounded up will be dealt with fairly and justly. Worse, so far the Chinese press response has been to assign embassy staff the task of going onto radio in the U.S. and elsewhere and call the Dalai Lama a “liar” (U.S. and Canada, at the least) and other things, rather than taking a more credible line - a point of view shared by Sidney.

All in all, there may be a bit more and less to the recent riots in Tibet than you may have thought.

These planning meetings are always fascinating and enjoyable, which is probably why FiRe, now in its sixth year, is, too. If you would like to hear more from Russ and Sidney on China, on how technology can implement a Rapid Response to Climate Crisis, and on the future of technology, join us in San Diego May 20-23; registration and more data are here:

www.futureinreview.com

The Secret MS vs. Yahoo! Plan

April 30th, 2008

1. MS stars quit the company and go work for Google.

2. Yahoo stars, ditto.

3. MS disses Yahoo, calls off bid; Yahoo stock first ever to achieve negative numbers.

4. MS stock doubles.

5. Yahoo, now linked at the hip to Google and with a valueless stock, drifts aimlessly through the Saragasso Sea of No Strategy.

6. MS buys Google.  Gets Yahoo online revenues by contract as part of the deal for free .  Kevin Martin intervenes with the FTC and Justice Dept, insisting that no competition is good competition.

7.  Ballmer re-reads note from investment bank lawyer, “what about Google?”, wondering if he misinterpreted the message.

President Abbas

April 29th, 2008

A funny thing happened on the way to George Bush bringing democracy to the Middle East: Palestine had a real election.  In that election, which unlike Bush’s own national election in the U.S., actually passed muster with the world’s election watchdog, the Carter Foundation, the current “president of Palestine” lost.

How could that be?  Just yesterday, I heard NPR unabashedly refer to this Abbas guy as “the president of Palestine.”  Maybe NPR has idiots for editors?  Maybe someone forgot to tell them that that guy Bush had over for a state dinner at the White House is, er, a fraud.

Actually, it’s worse: he’s our puppet.  Israel decided that the winners were too violent.

(Israel outkills the Palestinians in terms of innocent civilians by 4 to 1.  They also continually try to assassinate all Palestinian political leaders - or did, until they recently decided to take sides.  Now they just try to assassinate Hamas leadership, like the leader killed in Syria a couple weeks ago.)

Once Israel decided the winners of the Palestinian election were too violent, the U.S., poodle that it is, quickly agreed, and that was that. 

Or, in French, f**k democracy.

Now it falls to the global media to accept and propagate this tragicomedy.  I understand if someone writes, the “militant Hamas,” or “Hamas, the group responsible for most attacks on Israel,” both of which are probably true and fair. 

But the Bush family is responsible for most of the attacks on the Middle East, and I don’t see them stepping down because of it, in favor of the democratically elected (we now know) other party.

Is everyone really fooled by this charade?  Yes, I think most people forget about the details quite quickly.  Take Wikipedia, for example, which defines Abbas’ office this way, directly linked to his own page:

“The President is elected directly by the Palestinian people for a four year term.” 

That, Jimmy Wales, is an outright lie.

If you are in the media, please stop calling Abbas “president.”  There must be a better word. 

 “Poodle President” works for me.

Mark’s analysis of the current economic crisis

April 24th, 2008

View more videos from Strategic News Service

U.S. Economy Splits - Right on Schedule

April 20th, 2008

Last week the Wall St. Journal ran a front page headline story, “Economy Splits.” It talked about the unusual situation of having tech companies doing really well (particularly large, global tech companies), while the other half of the economy (housing, construction, finance) did poorly.

SNS Members were advised of this situation last fall, and are ready for it. Top managers at Silicon Valley Bank should also find this familiar territory, as it was the subject of our talk together a couple of months ago.

It will no longer be useful to our members or readers to refer solely to averages when discussing or thinking about the U.S. economy; there are two economies, at least, going in different directions.

IBM, eBay (a bit surprising), Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP, Google are setting records or turning in very strong earnings. Management at Washington Mutual just got shouted out of the building.

Multiple Input Genetics (Heritability Theory of Evolution)

April 19th, 2008

Evolution is about ready for a revolution. Back in 1972 and 3, I started puzzling over a better theory than the Central Dogma of the strict Darwinian theory I’d been taught in school. Over the years, I think I’ve pieced it together, and a few years ago, I started publishing it in the SNS Newsletter.

It’s quite simple, in retrospect. Darwin believed that the only sources of genetic input were from parents, and from random mutation. Wrong.

According to (my) Multiple Input Genetics Theory, DNA exists in a kind of equilibrium with other sources. The Darwinian view is still correct: parents are prime contributors, and random mutation occurs.

But there are at least two other sources: viruses in general, including retroviruses; and other cell-to-DNA messaging.

Finally, to make it work, there are mechanisms, as have now been discovered for some parasites, for direct effects on germ cells, vs. somatic cells.

Summary: The genetic material which is passed on to new generations consists of multiple inputs, including parental, random mutation, viral, and (other) reverse transcriptions.

While even today, scientists are aware of some of this, they still tend to think of the relationship between DNA and viruses as disease-only related; this will pass. No one I know of, except as you read it here, has come to the understanding of real multiple inputs, and of genetic equilibrium.

SNS Members have known for several years. Now you know.

Briefing the Marines

April 16th, 2008

Without going into a lot of detail, I was asked last week if I would prepare a discussion and points of view to be shared with a group meeting reporting to top miltary personnel. After a couple of talks on the telephone with the person who initiated these calls, I agreed.

Because the meeting was held at the Pentagon (or somewhere nearby on the east coast), an offer was made to set up a videoconferencing link through the Whidbey Naval Air Station nearby, which I accepted. The meeting happened this afternoon.

This is not the first time I’ve been involved in trying to make sure my own country is, particularly defensively, safe; I’ve also helped on bioterror defense strategies, pandemic planning, and, as SNS Members may recall, Project Intelligent Response. PIR was a group response to the 9.11 attacks, laying out how member companies and their technologies could be used to fight terror. I was able to hand-deliver bound copies of this book 30 days after the attacks, to Senators and others in DC who would benefit.

Today I briefed a 12 member team for two hours on how to reduce loss of life.

Without going into detail about the meeting’s contents, I want to thank the Navy and Marines for the honor of being asked for comment, and I hope that the contents of today’s discussion will be useful. Not surprisingly, every part of this experience was conducted in the most professional way possible, and those involved made it a real pleasure to be part of the process.

If I find that I can share the contents of this meeting, I’ll be happy to do so here and in SNS. Until then, it’s enough to say that I’m pleased I could find a way to be of assistance that may lead to saved lives.

All in all, it was an experience that made the investment of time and thought worthwhile.

My thanks go out to all involved.

The End of Peak Oil

April 15th, 2008

In the: Well, that didn’t take long dept.

Not long ago, I wrote in the SNS Newsletter www.stratnews.com and here that I thought the whole “peak oil” theory was wrong. At that time, I suggested that not only had there been several large “elephant” discoveries since the theory’s announcement (the theory suggests no more elephants, or big discoveries), but that more were yet to come.

Here is BusinessWeek from Nov, 2007:

“Petrobras announced Nov. 8 it has found between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels of light oil and gas at the Tupi field, 155 miles offshore southern Brazil in an area it shares with Britain’s BG Group and Portugal’s Galp Energy. Tupi is the world’s biggest oil find since a 12 billion-barrel Kazakh field was discovered in 2000, and the largest ever in deep waters. Perhaps more important, Petrobras believes Tupi may be Brazil’s first of several new “elephants,” an industry term for outsize fields of more than 1 billion barrels.

“Initially, Tupi will produce about 100,000 barrels a day but may ramp up to as much as 1 million before 2020—more than the biggest U.S. field in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay—”

This week, Brazilian hopes were proven true, as the new Carioca field was announced, fought over, re-evaluated, commented on, and re-drilled. Here is some text from Bloomberg:

Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s offshore Carioca prospect may hold 33 billion barrels of oil, enough to supply every refinery in the U.S. for six years, making it the third-largest oil field ever discovered.

Additional wells must be drilled to develop a “more conclusive” estimate, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said in an e-mailed statement. Only Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar and Kuwait’s Burgan fields are bigger: Ghawar holds as much as 83 billion barrels of crude, while Burgan has up to 72 billion.

Petrobras, as the company is known, rose almost 6 percent. U.S. depositary receipts of Repsol SA, a partner in the field, surged as much as 21 percent to $44.85, the stock’s largest daily gain. New York-based Hess Corp., which owns stakes in two nearby prospects, had its biggest intraday gain since 1981.

“If all of those barrels are recoverable, that’s a very significant find,” said Dick Gibson, a geologist who’s been advising oil and natural-gas producers since 1975. “That whole area off the coast of Brazil is becoming a new oil province.”

The Carioca field, also known as BM-S-9, is located beneath a layer of salt in the deepwater Santos Basin off Brazil’s southeastern coast, where Petrobras in November announced the discovery of the 8 billion-barrel Tupi field.

`Giant Field’

“This would be a giant field under any circumstances,” Merrill Lynch analysts Frank McGann and Shariff Koya said today in a note to clients. “If it were recoverable oil and gas, it would potentially dwarf Petrobras’s existing reserves.”

Brazil holds an estimated 12 billion barrels of crude reserves, South America’s second-largest deposit behind Venezuela, according to London-based BP Plc. If the 33 billion- barrel estimate for Carioca is confirmed by additional drilling, Brazil’s reserves would surpass those of Libya.

Carioca is 66 times larger than the Jack field discovered by Chevron Corp. in the Gulf of Mexico in 2004. San Ramon, California-based Chevron says it will cost more than $3 billion and almost a decade to bring the field into production.

for more, go to:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aHnLYLgBAlfM&refer=home

While others fight over whether the find will double or triple Brazil’s announced oil reserves, it’s clear that a brand-new field, underneath the salt dome off Brazil’s coast, will be one of the largest global finds of all time.

Although it will take as much as ten years to bring this to market, those won’t be idle years, as others speed up the feverish activity of finding new oil at today’s $110+ per bbl price. This will put a lot of pressure on those who want to keep the price high, as exploration teams come back with more and more finds, and the occasional elephant.

Can supply grow faster than demand? I imagine, particularly if the Western world continues to pursue an avenue of weaning itself asap from petroleum.

Today, producers have consumers exactly where they want: supply and demand, fed by Chinese futures contracts and speculators, have created a fake demand number equal or slightly higher than the supply. What would it take to deflate that price pressure? Not much. Just bringing fake demand down by perhaps a point or two would do it.

Don’t go long on oil, except in the short term. There’s plenty of it, and more where that came from.

http://satellitesky.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-elephant-oil-field-discovered-in.html

Greenspan Redux: The Fireman’s Blowback

April 9th, 2008

Alan Greenspan is having a tough time: the world has caught on to his shenanigans at the Fed, and much sooner than he would have liked. So it is that he’s taken to the hustings, protesting that he had no role in the current credit debacle or the US housing market and construction markets.

If he weren’t already guilty of malfeasance, he would now be guilty of the added charge of dissimulating - I mean, not telling the truth.

His most recent defenses, published in the FT and elsewhere, basically go like this: the whole world had a problem with housing, so why was I to blame? And, following: since the lenders and repackagers were to blame for the subprime mess, why bother me?

Clever, but no one ever said Alan was stupid.

Alan’s interest rate plunge after 2000 directly led to what I’ve termed Refi Madness, which began all this. Alan knew full well that putting US interest rates effectively below zero would pull all kinds of equity out of housing assets, even though Americans are the worst savers in the world, and even though homes are often their only and largest asset. Alan needed them spending that equity money on WalMart, and he went after it and got it.

Period. End of argument. Admit it, Alan: you screwed the people.

Add to this, that the original problem had nothing to do with subprime, which remains a subset of the US housing disaster. Most loans in default a year ago were not to subprime borrowers, but to prime borrowers over their head, having over extended themselves in speculation. Some bought three condos, some upgraded their own housing to too-expensive new homes, sure that prices would continue to go up forever.

Did the head of the Fed, watching this, think that house asset pricing would keep growing at 20% and more per year, forever? No, he didn’t.

Alan, you’re completely and personally responsible for doing something which was wrong. You may have intended well, but that’s your only defense. Don’t try for anything fancier, it just comes across as sad and pathetic, two qualities you don’t want to add to your current legacy of overreaching and misunderstanding.

I would like to thank Tim Coldwell for his smart and helpful posts on this and related banking subjects, most of which readers will find under the Ben and Hank thread below. Tim is a well-known European tech CEO who has been around long enough to recognize $42B in BS when he sees it.

I continue to think that Ben Bernanke, having been given a really tough and thankless task, is so far doing exemplary work. Keep it up, Ben! No one envies you, but we are all glad you are there.

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