Tim Oren's Due Diligence

Book Review Counter-Battery

Speaking of Tom Barnett, he's definitely discovered the pleasures of this medium. One of them is turning the tables on heretofore immune critics of your own work. So here's his rendition of every author's dream, a full frontal fisking of a book critic.

(Hat tip: Chap, who's been off blowing up our own ships again.)

Thriving on Chaos

If I finally become terminally frustrated with the bandwidth drought in my too-far-from-the-CO, last generation cable plant neighborhood in the hills of Silicon Vallley, and with the lack of deployed wireless alternatives, where might I move for better options? Turns out that among other choices, I should consider Mogadishu, Somalia.

If you haven't paid any attention to that locale since seeing "Blackhawk Down", some things have been changing. There's global Internet connectivity, Internet cafés, an Ethernet MAN in the center of town, and 11Mbit wireless (of an unspecified flavor) beyond. And they will be rolling out 3G wireless next year.

There are three competing communications companies, but no FCC, because there still isn't any central government. While the cynical (or anarcho-capitalists) might think there's some cause and effect there, the comms company managers would actually like to be paying some taxes to a government that could create a more stable security environment.

Still there are lessons to be drawn. There's an old one about the tyranny of an installed base (here) vs. the options that technology now offers green fields builds. There's one about the tenacity of entrepreneurs bringing up services of this sort in an atmosphere of minimal security and a lack of financial infrastructure that drives transactions costs through the roof.

Most of all, there's a lesson about the desire to connect and how far it has spread around the world. In many cases, as here, a driver is the family and social ties of expats. Which is good news for ideas like citizens' diplomacy, and grand visions like Tom Barnett's. Now, who can spot the first blog from Somalia? [Do I have to keep reminding you to Google before you post? Here you go. - Ed.]

(Via Chrenkoff)

Give A Blog For Xmas

Over at Winds of Change, I've been going on about an idea I call citizens' diplomacy, which in its simplest form is the observation that the cross-border conversations we have begun in the blogosphere will end by having a large impact on war or peace worldwide.

Blogosphere diplomacy must be like Internet markets - a conversation. It takes two to tango. While it's great that Iraqi bloggers like Zeyad and the Iraq the Model brothers have stepped forward to engage us in conversation, it's required that they write in English. There are undoubtedly a lot of other voices out there who don't have the language skills or inclination to do so, and we are missing them, and they are missing the chance to talk to us and their fellows.

Battering a generic blogging tool into handling Arabic (or Farsi) is not a job for the faint hearted, and for the novice may be almost as great a bar as the oddities of English. The cost of online hosting is also a substantial barrier. So Spirit of America has launched an effort called "Viral Freedom" to build an Arabic native blogging tool, and offer free hosting for those who need it. The blogosphere is teaming up to put some bucks behind this effort, and I've joined the Winds of Change team, "A Mighty Wind".

Clicking on the graphic will take you over to Spirit of America for further details, and to make a donation to this good cause. I've dropped 500 of my holiday donation bucks into the pot. How about some of you well-heeled investors and tech wonks who read this thing doing the same? Just think of it as a self-administered tax towards a start on an effective Internet based public diplomacy.

Social Security Privatization for Dummies

When blogger Jason Van Steenwyk isn't serving his country in Iraq or cleaning up after Florida hurricanes, he's a writer on financial affairs. Making him well qualified to lay out the implications of putting part of future Social Security funds into the public markets rather than into rubber Treasury IOUs. This he has done, first in a structural discussion of how to organize such funds and then in a lengthy and well deserved fisking of a financial illiterate who showed his ignorance of the topic in public. (Posts on 11/27 and /28, if the links are bloggered.)

To the best of my knowledge of the domain, he is spot on, so RTWT if the topic is of interest. I will add this amplification:

I know the style of investing which he describes (asset allocation and indexing) exists and works, because I practice it. You might have noticed I've never posted stock picks on Due Diligence. I don't do stock picks. I buy index funds in open ended or ETF formats, or low-turnover, low-expense no load funds when I can't find an exact surrogate for what I want. I weight against NASDAQ and IPOs, since being a general partner in a venture fund already gives me a heavy exposure to the wilder side of the markets. I set asset allocation goals on an annual basis, and use value averaging on a monthly basis to spread out market timing risk. (If you're interested in this investment approach, I suggest William Bernstein's book The Intelligent Asset Allocator.)

If it's good enough for a VC with access to enough information to do detailed tech sector analyses, why isn't it good enough for Social Security funds? As Jason points out, such an investment strategy would mean that SS investments would likely beat my own performance, due to the huge scale economies in expenses that could be realized.

Iraqi PSAs On The Net

Via Ferid in Baghdad, three short videos that are apparently being shown in rotation on most of the Arabic channels - Al Jiz excepted. They are from an organization called Future Iraq:

• Unity


• Security


• Protect Iraq

The first two are without words, and quite effective as such. Third has an Arabic VO - any translators out there?

Consider It A Market Indicator

Bullish indicator for Silicon Valley formal wear outlets? Actually, here's how it works:

• All CEOs in suits: Flat or down tech market


• Startup CEOs in jeans: Up market


• Establishment CEOs in jeans: Market peak, time to sell

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Just kidding. (I think.) Hat tip: Jeff Nolan

Call for Information: Arabic and Farsi Machine Translation

Jeff Jarvis unfortunately buries his lead in a post re Spirit of America fundraising: Both SixApart (typepad) and Blogger have agreed to help put together useable Arabic versions so the circle of Middle East bloggers can be expanded beyond those with English language skills. Tip of the hat and best wishes to them, as well as SoA's own project to produce an Arabic blogging tool.

So let me do the VC thing and ask the "lead the duck" question: Assuming we can foster an Arabic blogging community, how do we stay connected across the language barrier? Yes, there are dedicated folks working at manually translating blog posts and comments at places like Sarmad's Road of a Nation Forums, but it's a grind and slows the action to a crawl.

One part of the answer is to throw cheap cycles at the problem, that is, machine translation. Yes, I'm fully aware of the limitations of the technology, but a cheap something is better than an expensive nothing. And we can all find common ground in making fun of the translation software, at the least.

To that end, I'd like to ask the help of readers to identify best-of-breed technology sources for translation between English and Arabic and Farsi. I'm already aware of Language Weaver and Meaningful Machines on the Arabic to English front. Since much of the development in these areas has been funded (quite openly) by DARPA and In-Q-Tel, there's more available for the path into English than the other way, but we're going to need both, so please send in any tips. The current state-of-the-art has moved to corpus based translation, but an older rule based system would be better than nothing. Right now, this is a technology survey, we'll worry about how to get the systems integration and business deals done later.

Got a clue for me? I'm opening comments on this post for the first time in DD's history. Warning: OT entries will be deleted ruthlessly; I have no tolerance for troll droppings. Expect the comments to be closed about two weeks after the original entry; if you're a late comer, see my e-mail address on the About page.

Out and About

This week has been mostly devoted to cranking out the fund's quarterly investor report, but I've started what will become a series of posts re citizens' media and foreign affairs over at Winds of Change. That thread is further OT from the regular fare here than I like, plus comments are on at WoC for feedback, so I'm probably not doing to be dual posting this material on DD.

There have been a few modest changes around here.

I've finally gotten around to setting up as an Amazon affiliate. It may be self-defeating, but I don't like the clutter produced by Amazon's default graphics links, so what you get is a modest text list of what I'm reading now and in the last few weeks, over on the left above the blogroll. Realistically, this is just going to further feed my Amazon jones, but it's also an excuse to put up an occasional review of books that make it through the input queue.

Digging around for material on the citizens' media and foreign affairs themes, I've (re)encountered several sites that are going to become regulars, so they are now on my good ol' fashioned blogroll:

• 2Slick is a Blackhawk pilot in the sandbox, who gets around to Mosul, Kuwait, and other garden spots. Thankfully, he spends a lot of his downtime putting out good analysis on the military situation over there, and ripping apart deserving MSM stories. He's filed under 'Frontlines'.


• The Adventures of Chester became an invaluable source of near-realtime analysis during the reduction of Fallujah. Chester is an ex-Marine officer, and is continuing on with looks at related topics such as Iran. Chapomatic is written by a squidly type who apparently gets paid to sail around the world and blow up our own ships. OK, they're scrap, but just the same. He also writes some outstanding analysis while reclining in nuclear powered splendor. Chap and Chester are under 'Defense Spinoffs'.


• I've already mentioned Circulation Dropping, a blog chronicling the continuing woes of the legacy media. It's now permanently in 'Network Effects'. That's also where I'm placing defense analyst Thomas Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map. That might sound counter-intuitive, but it's not - the thesis of his book is very much about connectivity. I suggest you RTWT, especially if you a liberal who thinks it might be a good idea to have a coherent way to think about avoiding a war of civilizations. Have I mentioned that I recommend it?

And to take us out into the weekend, here's a little linky fest of bits I've run into in the last few days:

• Our Rockets Always Blow Up. Rand Simberg tells us why SpaceShipOne and its descendents aren't doomed to the same fate as the shuttle. There's a guy who knows more about learning curves than NASA has understood in its entire history.


• Pay Up, You Deadbeats! Just when I was rejoicing that we'd seen the last of the Peterson trial, it turns out that Stanislaus County, which wished this thing on us, isn't paying their bills for the expenses. Hey, that's my tax money! See you in court, Central Valley deadbeats. (Both those via the Blogfather.)


• Tell us how you really feel, Ali! Ali of the Iraq The Model brothers comes back to town, apparently invigorated by an out-of-country visit with the good folks at Spirit of America, and lays a heavy duty smackdown on Jacques Chirac (11/19 post). Ouch, that's gotta hurt!


• And how do you feel, Mike? Not one to let the overseas crowd get ahead in the battle of acid keyboards, Mike at Cold Fury turns a flamethrower on whiners who lost the election. The gentle art of invective lives on.


• But this is a lot more constructive. A bow in the direction of fellow Winds of Change commenter Praktike for his efforts in putting together something called TerrorWiki, whose mission is "to articulate a comprehensive strategy for defeating terrorism that is in line with fundamental principles of liberalism." An effort that deserves more attention.


• Double Taps. Chap takes on the Fallujah shooting incident, and calls it as it is: information warfare. The Laughing Wolf questions Kevin Sites' judgment, and the merits of a privileged position for journalists, when it undermines the society that pays their way. If we are all journalists now, why should some be accorded the (dubious) privilege of being escorted into a live firefight if it puts the troops and mission at greater risk? Getting government into the censorship business is not the right way in a democracy, but the legacy media do want taking down a notch. I prefer to see it done the Silicon Valley Way, with chaos and competition. (For those thinking the Fallujah situation was anything new, I suggest an entire chapter entitled 'Double Taps' from David Zucchino's book Thunder Run. The same sort of play-dead sniping happened during the assault on Baghdad, and was dealt with the same way.)


• Huge Tracts O' Land! Did anyone else notice that the Sears/K-Mart deal was at least half about real estate? The worst thing is that my erstwhile favorite online clothes merchant, Lands' End, will soon be in the clutches of K-Mart. Agggggh!
  

You all have a good weekend!

Hey, I Agree with Kevin Drum About Something!

The new head of the California DMV floats the idea of tracking vehicles by GPS and taxing them by miles driven, which is righteously dismantled by Kevin. Let's see. New proposal: Intrusive, privacy violating, destroys incentives for mileage efficiency. Old system: Taxes paid rise with mileage driven, drop when adopting fuel efficient technology. What's not to like? Got a problem with tax income falling? Take a benchmark year's income, add a COLA inflator, then set the rate each year by dividing by prior year's fuel volume. Extra feature: Puts increasing pressure on gas hog vehicles as part of the fleet becomes more efficient. QED.

Unlike some of Kevin's commenters, I did bother to notice that the Governator has not backed the plan, and BTW the proposed new DMV director is a Democrat. If Ahnuld is smart he'll tell her to stick a sock in it regarding this real holiday turkey of an idea.

(HT: Praktike)

Slo-Mo Disaggregation

Scott Loftesness recounts some online service history (which we share) and examines the slow unraveling of AOL's business model into separate access and aggregation components. One of CompuServe's dirty little secrets was its paucity of actual content aggregation skills - it was mostly a chokepoint. Now we get to find out whether AOL can actually compete on that front. Interesting that Scott didn't even mention that AOL is in the same corporate shell as Time Warner's big pile of content. The implicit statement - with which I agree - is that it's now CW that proprietary content does not enable an aggregation play. Maybe we have been learning things!