DISQUS

Dave,
I couldn't agree more with your assessment. Worst case scenario: Running Google Apps through Google Chrome (the browser) on Google Chrome (the OS) with Google tracking your behavior to present you with really personalized ads, which they can sell for a premium.
If Google Chrome (the browser) is running on a Google OS (Android or Chrome OS), then Google owns the search market on such a configuration. Nothing comes for free. You always end up paying for something one way or another.

The article is poorly researched. It is based on three key assumptions: (1) At least one of the two big Swiss banks will go belly up, (2) The funds needed for a bail out are higher than 3 trillion USD and (3) the Swiss government would need to come up with those 3 billion USD. Now, let's have a look at the probability of those assumptions: (1) Both large Swiss banks are properly financed and have a good BIS capital ratio, so that the probaility of one of them going belly up is very low. (2) None of the large Swiss banks has uncovered obligations that come anywhere close to even 100 billion USD, they actually have no uncovered obligations today. Hence even the probability of funds needed for an unlikely bail out to exceed 100 billion USD is close to zero. (3) The probability of the Swiss government needing to come up with 3 trillion USD to bail out the two large Swiss banks is close to zero.

There are simplily no facts to back up the claim that Switzerland might go bankrupt.

Using the same kind of specualtion, the US could also go bankrupt if they need to bail out the financial and auto industry and come up with 150 trillion USD. It is just the probability which is close to zero.

Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros were investment banks, whereas UBS and CS are universal banks. The leverage numbers thus are not comparable and cannot serve as a valid indicator.

Iceland and Switzerland are as comparable as apples and oranges. Switzerland's banking system is sound. A look at the BIS capital ratios gives a clear indication. The two largest banks did have to make some substantial write-offs due to investment banking activities in the US and the UK, but did scale back US and UK investment banking substantially over the last 18 months and recapitalized.

Thanks for the pointer, which lead me to another pointer, which actually serves as source and foundation for the article you referenced.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-mov...

And both articles are somewhat based on pure speculation, published here:

http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2498

The only time Switzerland is mentioned - among other countries - is in the speculation "who might be vulnerable" at the end. But have a close look at the requirements that would need to be fulfilled. It is pure specualtion on which characteristics are needed for a country in order to have a certain probability to be subject to the same problems as Iceland. The low number of four characteristics used gives a good idea on the amount of speculation exercised.

http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2549
A description of Iceland's situation and how it got there.

You cannot really compare Iceland with Switzerland, the two countries, their economies, their administration and their banks are completely different. More different than apples and oranges. And thus the probability of Switzerland becoming the next Iceland is incredibily low, actually pretty unrealistic.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/08/1681...
The Financial Times has published a chart from a Citibank report which showed bank assets as a percentage to their home country's GDP.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/200...
This article did not mention Switzerland until the last sentence.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-mov...
A pure speculation without any foundation.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/11/12/1812...
Combines the previoulsy published chart from Citi with the speculations pubished by Portfolio.com.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/...
And then a blog entry combining all the speculation and trying to make it sound realistic.

Overall, it is pure specualtion based on fabricated "facts". There are too many "ifs" in there: 1) UBS would need to fail, 2) UBS would need to loose all its assets and 3) Switzerland would have to replace all of UBS's assets. And on top of that Switzerland would need to immediately sevenfold the inflation rate, etc. The probability is about the same as the US car makers getting bailed out today with instant availability of 25 billion dollars with no strings attached.

UBS publishes its numbers on its website: www.ubs.com. The author of the article on Portfolio.com somehow did not figure that out yet, so he missed the changes in UBS’s numbers between 31.12.2007 and today.

There is an interesting twist to this whole reporting: The UK competes with Switzerland as a banking center and UK banks compete with Swiss banks. Most of the articles were published by UK organizations (FT and Economist) and UK-centric writers (Felix Salmon and John Quiggin). Do they want to deviate the attention away from the UK banks?

Granted, the headlines of the articles were attention-grabbing. The articles, though, are pure fiction. Once could also call it bs.

Thanks for the pointer, which lead me to another pointer, which actually serves as source and foundation for the article you referenced.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-mov...

And both articles are somewhat based on pure speculation, published here:

http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2498

The only time Switzerland is mentioned - among other countries - is in the speculation "who might be vulnerable" at the end. But have a close look at the requirements that would need to be fulfilled. It is pure specualtion on which characteristics are needed for a country in order to have a certain probability to be subject to the same problems as Iceland. The low number of four characteristics used gives a good idea on the amount of speculation exercised.

http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2549
A description of Iceland's situation and how it got there.

You cannot really compare Iceland with Switzerland, the two countries, their economies, their administration and their banks are completely different. More different than apples and oranges. And thus the probability of Switzerland becoming the next Iceland is incredibily low, actually pretty unrealistic.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/08/1681...
The Financial Times has published a chart from a Citibank report which showed bank assets as a percentage to their home country's GDP.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/200...
This article did not mention Switzerland until the last sentence.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-mov...
A pure speculation without any foundation.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/11/12/1812...
Combines the previoulsy published chart from Citi with the speculations pubished by Portfolio.com.

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/...
And then a blog entry combining all the speculation and trying to make it sound realistic.

Overall, it is pure specualtion based on fabricated "facts". There are too many "ifs" in there: 1) UBS would need to fail, 2) UBS would need to loose all its assets and 3) Switzerland would have to replace all of UBS's assets. And on top of that Switzerland would need to immediately sevenfold the inflation rate, etc. The probability is about the same as the US car makers getting bailed out today with instant availability of 25 billion dollars with no strings attached.

UBS publishes its numbers on its website: www.ubs.com. The author of the article on Portfolio.com somehow did not figure that out yet, so he missed the changes in UBS’s numbers between 31.12.2007 and today.

There is an interesting twist to this whole reporting: The UK competes with Switzerland as a banking center and UK banks compete with Swiss banks. Most of the articles were published by UK organizations (FT and Economist) and UK-centric writers (Felix Salmon and John Quiggin). Do they want to deviate the attention away from the UK banks?

Granted, the headlines of the articles were attention-grabbing. The articles, though, are pure fiction. Once could also call it bs.

I am sorry to dissapoint you, Dave, but Switzerland (the country) is actually making a profit. Also nearly all key industries are doing just fine and the unemployment rate is at 2.5% This makes it highly unlikely that Switzerland will go bankrupt any time soon. Island might have a better choice...

A couple of years back, Switzerland's population voted on what is known as "Schuldenbremse" (restriction for the federal government to make additional debt), which forces government and parliament to limit expenses to match revenues.

Detailed information can be found at www.admin.ch

Too much generalization. The browser is one of the interfaces, but not the only one. We will see a hybrid of local and web-based applications. There are too many things you can't do properly within a browser's restriction.

How would the US react if the Russians built up missile interception bases and stationed troops in Cuba or Mexico? Looking at a map it is pretty easy to see how Russia feels beseaged by NATO and the US. US troops in Georgia, US troops in Poland and so on. No wonder Russia feels threatend. Any country being surrounded by "unfriendly" troops wood be.

Dave's "Howto for demoers" is really a classic and has been at least one the first ones available and is definitely one of the best. In terms of a guide for software developers demoing at the DEMO conference it for sure was the first. You might have missed the initial phase of the PC industry, so you might not be aware that the WWW wasn't invented before 1991 and that guidance was hard to find at that time and mostly kept company internal. Dave's piece made that know-how accessible to a wider audience. Dave's claim chas nothing do to with arrogance or paranoia and is absolutely warranted, at least for people that a capable of reading.

Hi Robert,

I understand your frustration about being pitched me-too products. Alllow me to introduce a company to you whose products you will love:

http://www.santegourmet.com/

The founder/owner, Elisa Nakata, made a switch from a high tech carrier over to food, seeing the need for great-tasting, but healthy desserts. Not only are the products she developped over the period of a couple of years (yes, a lot of alpha- and beta-testing...) absolutely great, but she has a really interesting background as well (PM for AppleWorks on Apple II, PM for MacWrite II (Kanjji version), VP at Pointcast, work with David Bowie and Quincy Jones, MBA in food etc.).

Give Elisa a call or drop her a mail and volunteer to test....

I had initially also thought, that it is a pure software and services model, but when you get into the details it becomes obvious that in a set-top box environment all intelligence moves to the set-top box and the HDMI connection to the TV relegates the TV to a pure monitor functionality. Of course there is still the possibility to offload audio processing to an amp, but when you connect the set-top box directly to the TV most of the advanced funtionality of the TV gets lost as it is tied to the tuner module.
I haven’t played with a TiVo box yet as in Europe they seem to be a complete no-show.
That the current set-top software is underwhelming is hard to dispute. On the other hand it will be difficult to get cable operators to support set-top boxes that can be loaded with third-party software by the user. For satellite set-top boxes that is different, though.

There is one huge issue that seems to go hardly noticed. The set-top box basically replaces the tuner part of the TV and all that great functionality built into it, such as volume normalization. The software is one part of the equation, but the hardware needs to be at least equivalent to the current TV tuner technology. In terms of software, I haven't seen any set-top box with an acceptable user interface and functionality. We do have a hardware, a software and a services model problem and that will be challenging to solve as any viable solution needs to have different players with different interests work together.

http://info.cern.ch/

Robert,

there is probably one key reference in terms of recording live music: the Montreux Jazz Festival. From its inception in the early 60s nearly all concerts have been recorded live with the most advanced technology standards available at the time of the recording. HDTV is being used since 1991 (with one exception due to the change from Hi-Vision to digital HDTV). Quincy Jones' TED 3 presentation in 1992 consisted of an overview of 25 years of unforgettable recordings (and we even partially used converted HD footage for that presentation way back then...)
Following your arguments one could say that the coolest jog in the world would be one of the founder and CEO of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Claude Nobs.

But being reasonable, one has to realize that their are many cool jobs in the world and what counts is the subjective view of the person doing his job. There are a lot of people who see their job as the coolest job in the world and they have any right and justification to do so. Only when you love what you do you can outperform.

Link to the Montreux Jazz Festival: http://www.montreuxjazz.com/news/index_en.aspx
Link to Montreux Jazz Library: http://www.montreuxsounds.com/

Robert, a very thoughtful post. Mixing up children from different origins gives them the right perspective as they learn that they all can get along.
You might also want to have look at the Pestalozzi Children's Foundation which has been focussing on giving international children a brighter future.
http://www.pestalozzi.ch/sw451.asp

Fortunately the web was not invented in the Silicon Valley and the first website ever didn't even have a .com, .org or.net extension. CERN, where the web was born, has its website at www.cern.ch.....

There is an excellent book on the power of the brain: http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Brain-Breakthroug...

I would ask mainly two questions:

1. Who were the other key members of the team at CERN that made the web happen and how was the term "world wide web" coined?

2. Which were the two prominent US VCs who were approach for funding back in the very early 90s who declined to invest when Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillou were looking to find financing?

Calling Plaxo the "Switzerland" of social networks or the "Switzerland" of personal infomation is misleading. I can't see any aspect that would qualify Plaxo to be the "Switzerland" of social networks or of personal information. By Swiss standards, the product is unfit for the market.

While in Geneva, you can visit the place the web was born (http://www.cern.ch) and have a look the cool tech tuff they are working on. The LHC project is huge and what they are doing in terms of grid and data processing to cope with the incredible amount of data generated by the LHC is amazing. Let me know if you need a contact.

When in Basel, make sure you find the time to visit the Tinguely museum (http://www.tinguely.ch/en/index.html). There are plenty of other great things to see and encounter there (http://www.basel.ch). Your mom's sister will probably be familiar with most of them. Have a great trip.

"In my experience this is impossible." A lot of restaurants have multiple rooms and can separate smoking and non-smoking.

"Yes we can and increasingly we will as demonstrated by Scotland and Ireland and Canada." This is called dictatorship of a majority and is a very dangerous thing. If it makes economical sense to have a non-smoking restaurant then owners will immediately convert to non-smoking.

"US VCs invested in Skype, which was based in Europe. And in Fon, which is based on Europe." Initial funding for Skype came from European VCs (Mangrove Capital of Luxembourg) and European VCs contributed substantially in the follow-on round. Tim Draper just was by far the most vocal of the follow-on investors. In the case of Fon you will also notice that there was at least one European VC (Index Ventures, who also invested in Skype at the same time as DFJ) that invested.
The big advantages of the Valley is the local business infrastructure (which includes VCs, lawyers, talent pool and proximity to potential US partners/customers) and the huge (and relatively simple) US market.
The big disadvantage are the limited international know-how, the limited local talent pool, high costs and the initial absolute focus on the US market.
Now these are of course generalizations, which do not apply for every case.
The Valley is also highly dependent on technology development that takes or took place elesewhere and that serves as foundation for new products. Just a couple of examples: The two core people behind the web were an Englishman and a Belgian working at CERN in Switzerland; most of Intels' new processor architectures were developed in Israel; The world's leading mobile network standard (GSM, 2 billion users) was primarily developed in Europe, etc.
The Valley cannot survive without the "outside" world. Although there is quite some interdependency and finally the world could exist without the Valley, but it probably wouldn't work the other way around.
Respecting smokers and non-smokers alike is the only way to go. Where non-smokers cannot evade the smoke, smoking should not be permitted. In a restaurant it is fairly easy to have non-smoking and smoking sections and where it is not possible the owner of the place should decide if his place is smoking or non-smoking. Everybody is free to chose the place he/she prefers. As smokers cannot expect to smoke everywhere they are, non-smokers cannot expect every place they want to go to be smoke-free. If it turns out that smoke-free places are more profitable than smoking places, then the market will decide.
Live and let live.

Robert, as your blog is in English you can at least expect that your readers are not kept away by language issues. In terms of half-baked technology solutions there are just way too many examples. Here just a couple of them:

- address books: different country, different address standards. Now try to keep an address book where addresses from different countries are stored and should be printed correctly for each country.
- online forms: different countries, different languages, different address formats, different phone number formats, different date formats should be automatically supported and then normalized on the back-end
- remote speech recognition (e.g. IVR systems): There is simply no speech recognition system that can function properly when it doesn't even know upfront which language it has to deal with
- character set issues: nearly 20 years after the first Unicode drafts the problems still persist. It is not as bad as it used to be, but still noticeable

The big underlying problem is that variables are treated as constants, which reduces the technical challenge, but creates half-baked products. One part of that problem is that a lot of developers don't even realize that what they treat as constants are in fact variables.