Jinn of Quality and Risk

Collaboratively creating (and using) a hobo-language for wireless networking. 

Here is the key to peace in the Middle East: If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government. Bush has made a proposal that could inspire all peace-loving people in Arab countries to rebel against their current tyrants in order to adopt a new form of society: constitutional republics instituted to protect individual rights and free markets. This is what happened in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, starting in 1989. The people who will oppose this proposal are dictators and the terrorists they support, as well as al-Qaeda. It will be interesting to see how the Palestinian people react; do they value life and prosperity, or death and terror? America helped Germany and Japan on the path to the blessings of liberty after WWII, and proposes to do the same for the Middle East. What a vision to behold! 

Regardless of when the Reaper comes calling, how shall we greet him? With defiance or serenity? With sorrow or laughter? Will we have prepared our response? Or will we trust to the inspiration of the moment? Such questions have a heightened importance to those of us for whom this life is the standard of value and afterlife a myth. 

In their book, Creating Breakthrough Products: Innovation from Product Planning to Program Approval, Vogel and Cagan advocate an integrated approach to product design. Innovative new products, the authors argue, come from mastering the "fuzzy front end." They happen when a company delivers on both style and technology in a way that can provide some measure of fantasy. ... [They] identify seven classes of attributes that can create value by contributing to a product's usefulness, usability, and desirability -- all of which create an experience that fulfills a consumer's fantasy: emotion, aesthetics, product identity, impact, ergonomics, core technology, and quality.