No, not baseball, but Pipers! [WSJ: Subscription Required]

"Zero Six Hotel has a 12-gallon fuel tank. That's enough for three hours, but the Federal Aeronautics Administration requires me to keep 30 minutes in reserve, and a cautious pilot doubles that. The wind is always blowing -- almost always to the disadvantage of a Piper Cub -- and airports aren't spaced as closely as Exxon stations."

8:37:42 PM     

You have to love this...

Opening day details

The Forum has just announced a few of the details for the opening day.

Hamid Karzai, who heads the interim administration in Afghanistan, will speak at the opening plenary. If the impact makes people understand the long-term difficulties that will attend reconstructing his nation, Karzai's intervention will be welcome. Although the development pledges made last week in Tokyo were a good start, long-term support for the hard slog of nation-building (that verboten phrase in the White House) is not yet assured.

The cultural extravaganza later on Thursday will include: Bono, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Herbie Hancock, Lauryn Hill, Joshua Bell, Branford Marsalis, Arturo Sandoval, Ravi Shankar and Hikaru Utada. I'm not sure how you mix these and others together, but I trust Quincy Jones does know.

[Davos Newbies]

7:22:31 PM     

Today was the coldest morning of the year in San Francisco -- at least that's how it felt to me!

Reports of snow on the high peaks/roads in the Bay Area this morning.

Cold that went right through my flimsy jacket while waiting for the Caltrain this morning!

(I used the new Radio UserLand My Pictures tool to upload this webcam shot from about 8 AM this morning. That's Telegraph Hill in the distance. The blue in this shot is really beautiful!)   6:30:10 PM     

ComputerWorld this week has a couple of web services stories. They also report on the use of biometrics by banks.

Top economist critical of Microsoft settlement. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Nobel prize-winning economist criticised the proposed settlement of the government's antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. , as a public comment period closed Monday. Stanford University professor Kenneth Arrow said the settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department and nine states in the case failed to improve competition and would not deter Microsoft from future illegal acts.

OASIS Forms Web Services Technical Committee. A slew of firms has agreed to work on forging standards for portal-based Web services.

Computer Attacks on Companies Up Sharply. Cyber attacks are becoming more common and targeted, according to study to be released today, and security experts warned that the trend is only going to increase. [The Washington Post : Business]

W3C announce creation of Web Services Activity to bring Web Services to their full potential [WebServices.Org]

OPML and standard schemas. Dave Winer, of MORE and Userland fame, promises that OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) will be the next big thing.... [Digital Identity]

Is a know-it-all grocery cart in shoppers' future?. WASHINGTON (AP) -- You swipe your savings card against a screen mounted on a supermarket shopping cart. As you move about the store, the screen flashes ads for products you usually buy, notes that you haven't bought toothpaste in six months and provides recipes and health information. [SiliconValley.com: Breaking News]

Technology: Palm's Wireless Handheld Arrives. 06:07 ET - AP [NewsBlip.com] I own a Palm VII -- what a disaster as a product. This new model features "always on" email -- the primary advantage of the RIM Blackberry (which is my favorite "toy" of all time!).   5:48:25 AM