Jinn of Quality and Risk

We've been using our ADSL connection for 6 weeks now. Time to look at some statistics, as reported by the modem... The connection is rated in Kb/sec: 288 up / 576 down. In the last 42 days, we've uploaded 839,414 KB and downloaded 4,353,208 KB. That's 19.5 MB/day up and 101 MB/day down. In other words, an average total traffic of 120 MB/day, or 5 MB/hour, or a constant stream of 11.45 Kb/sec. As if we'd had a 14.4k modem permanently stuffed with bits for 6 weeks. Imagine that :-) Overall, we've been using about 1.3% of our theoretically available bandwidth.

After 3 weeks, our average traffic had been somewhat higher, 154 MB/day, equivalent to a constant stream of 14.4 Kb/sec. The urge to download software demos, movie trailers, etc. is slowly decreasing.

One last comment: this ADSL connection is not broadband, no matter what our provider advertises. It's permanently on, yes. It's 10-12x faster than a 56k modem, yes. But it's not enough to watch DVD-quality movies over the Internet. 

Teresa Amabile: our research suggests that managers should try to avoid or reduce the "obstacles to creativity" (time pressure and organizational impediments like political problems, harsh criticism of new ideas, and emphasis on the status quo) and enhance the "stimulants to creativity" (freedom, positive challenge in the work); sufficient resources (work-group supports, putting together diversely skilled teams that communicate well, are mutually committed to the work, and constructively discuss ideas); supervisory encouragement (team leaders who communicate effectively with the group, value individual contributions, protect the group within the organization, set clear goals while allowing freedom in meeting the goals, and serve as good work models); and organizational encouragement (like conversations about ideas across the organization, and a top management focus on rewarding and recognizing good creative work).

She indicates being surprised that while our participants were giving evidence of less creative thinking on time-pressured days, they reported feeling more creative on those days. [via Tesugen] 

Fortune: In three years, from 1999 to 2001, venture capitalists raised $204 billion to back young companies... Between 1970 and 1998, VCs attracted a total of $132 billion to finance startups. In other words they raised more money in three manic years than they had during the nearly three decades that preceded them. If you include money from previously raised funds, VCs have $252 billion in capital under management today.

Now consider the pickle in which the industry finds itself. Venture funds run ten years. To earn 18% annual returns for their investors--the low end of historical venture capital returns--the funds would have to create $1.3 trillion in market value by selling or taking public their portfolio companies over the remainder of the decade. [via Scripting News]

It's not much, not shocking at all. Really. Today, the total market cap of NASDAQ-quoted companies is about $1.1 trillion. Remember that numbers are not absolute, they express relations. Historically, the average US stock market growth has been 12% per year. Obviously, the next ten years may see higher, or lower, growth; we only know that in the long run, all market phenomena have a tendency to return to the average. A $1.3 increase over $1.1 corresponds to a 118% increase, i.e. about 8% annual growth compounded over ten years (12% annual growth would lead to a 210% increase in 10 years); note that this discussion has totally ignored other stockmarkets in the US (e.g. the NYSE) and the rest of the world. Thus, VC expectations are quite reasonable, in proportion to existing US capital; one could make a case that they're rather timid, actually. 

Bernard Lewis: When things go wrong in a society, in a way and to a degree that can no longer be denied or concealed, there are various questions that one can ask. A common one, particularly in continental Europe yesterday and in the Middle East today, is: 'Who did this to us?' The answer to a question thus formulated is usually to place the blame on external or domestic scapegoats — foreigners abroad or minorities at home. [What Went Wrong? Chapter 1, The Lessons of The Battlefield] 

Macs are friendly to people like me says cellist Yo Yo Ma. But did he switch? 

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is committed to the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be. 

Lt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike ... originally named the mountain "Grand Peak," but cartographers labeled it "Pikes Peak" on their maps [near modern-day Colorado Springs]. Pike failed in his attempt to climb the mountain and predicted that no one would ever reach the summit. My friends Anders and Maria drove me to the summit of Pikes Peak one morning last August :-). The Audi was very comfortable; the weather and view were great. 

/.: IBM announced [the] launch of a Bugzilla bug tracking database for 2.5 linux kernel series - it's at bugme.osdl.org. Finally... easily keep track of known bugs without being subscribed to thousand [sic] of mailing lists or googling to death. An example of the usefulness and power of such a public database is Bonsai Watch at MozillaNews, automatically enumerating recent Mozilla fixes.