Friday, July 26, 2002

Breakpoint: Why You Must Act Now Barry Carter writes: At the dawn of the Information Age there are serious questions to be asked. How and when do we make it past breakpoint? Can this occur with­out catastrophic violence, death and turmoil? Is there the likelihood that we will not make it into the new era? Can the transition occur through slow, continuous improvement, or is it an all-or-none proposition? Throughout the rest of this book, these questions shall be answered. However, in short, slow continu­ous change alone is a doomed strategy. The science of breakpoint as well as our precedence from the past indicates that the change will be abrupt and quick. ... Breakpoints are natural phenomenon in the develop­ment of any evolving system, where the rules suddenly and sharply shift. The old rules no longer apply and even become counterproduc­tive. ... As we look at the United States, the most advanced of the industrialized nations and the leader into the Information Age, we see a society nearing breakpoint.  A society that fits the first rule of the breakpoint concept—the systems become ineffective and inefficient. ... The barbarians are at the gate as millions of empowered losing individuals want what you have and are gaining the power to violently take it. Either you begin win/win wealth-creation today and begin truly caring about others or you and your family stand to lose it all. (07/26/02) You Will Never Take Our Freedom Dan Gillmor is attending the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, he reports from there as the conference speakers take the podium: Larry Lessig is doing his usual wowing of the audience. He's showing the dangerous hypocrisy of the copyright industry, both in the endless extensions of copyright and the technological clamp-down on old-fashioned things such as studying the work in question and fair use. ... What once were unregulated uses of copyrighted material are now heavily regulated, due to technology. Unregulated uses are disappearing, and so are fair uses, as laws combine with copyright and technology to stamp out creativity, he says. ... "You remind the rest of the world what it was like when creativity and innovation was a process where people added to common knowledge," he tells the crowd. But "free code threatens," Lessig says, and the threatened -- such as Microsoft -- are fighting back. He quotes Bill Gates' statement that startups will someday exist only if the incumbent giants allow them to exist., and Microsoft's own threats to use its patents against open source. The growth of software patents is a huge danger. "What have you done about it?" Lessig asks. ... "If you don't do something now, this freedom you've built will be taken away," he says. The crowd is remarkably silent. If you don't fight for your freedom you don't deserve it, he says to weak applause. "This is not about left and right; it's about right and wrong." (07/26/02) Who Really Cooks the Books? New York Times -- Warren E. Buffett writes: There is a crisis of confidence today about corporate earnings reports and the credibility of chief executives. And it's justified. For many years, I've had little confidence in the earnings numbers reported by most corporations. I'm not talking about Enron and WorldCom — examples of outright crookedness. Rather, I am referring to the legal, but improper, accounting methods used by chief executives to inflate reported earnings. The most flagrant deceptions have occurred in stock-option accounting and in assumptions about pension-fund returns. The aggregate misrepresentation in these two areas dwarfs the lies of Enron and WorldCom. ... All that is bad, but the far greater sin has been option accounting. Options are a huge cost for many corporations and a huge benefit to executives. No wonder, then, that they have fought ferociously to avoid making a charge against their earnings. Without blushing, almost all C.E.O.'s have told their shareholders that options are cost-free. (07/26/02) 6:04:17 AM

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