My favorite chip maker bought my favorite graphics card company. In AMD has to buy ATI to survive, The Inquirer explains the strategic context of AMD’s acquisition of ATI and argues it’s all for the best:
The net effect is good for ATI, good for AMD, and good for everyone else, including all the current AMD partners. For all the analysts, deep breaths, think of your happy place. This is not bad, not bad at all, in fact it is very good. Breathe.
Major thanks to George for all the interesting posts while I was away on vacation. If I wrote that much meaty stuff relating to my work … this blog would be work.
While in one sense this break was a true vacation — I had lousy internet access and didn't even try to work except for the last couple days when I went to a meeting in Geneva — it was also more prone to minor disasters and discomforts than any family vacation in recent memory. These included a 24 hour airline delay, the airline losing my luggage, the airline computer choosing to delete my return reservation for no good reason (see a pattern yet?), unpleasant issues with our rented accommodations, and of course the biggest heat wave in modern British and Swiss history (“Genève n'en finit pas de cuire” said the hoardings, and they had it right.)
The highlights of the London part of the trip were meeting old friends and seeing the new Tom Stoppard play, Rock and Roll, a superb production of a very good play. I also enjoyed going to the reconstructed Globe Theater for the first time, although the production of Anthony and Cleopatra was too much of the 'declaiming Shakespeare' type instead of the more naturalistic RSC-style 'acting Shakespeare' which I like best. Then again, maybe that's what you have to do in a big outdoor space like the Globe.
I'm not sure how much I'll plunge straight into high-volume blogging this week, especially as I will be in DC Wednesday and some of Thursday. I have to work on syllabi, pay bills, fight with the city about a permit, and of course catch up on back emails.
But meanwhile, following up on a loose end: My brother's column from July 20 straightens out the confusion about which S. Baker is who. The “Director of Lessons Learned” is not the Stewart Baker I was defending, but Stuart Baker:
Much was made last week of Stuart G. Baker's job title: Director of Lessons Learned. But it turns out his job is neither some sort of namby-pamby new agey thing, nor a stealth White House inspector general position telling everyone what they're doing wrong.
Instead, the title is an outgrowth of the White House's ” Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned ” report. And Baker, a detailee from the Department of Homeland Security who worked on that report, is now charged with coordinating the response to the report's recommendations.
So, as Emily Lattella used to say, “never mind”….
Thanks to a recent speech by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) making fun of his (unofficial?) title at the Dept. of Homeland Security (“Director for Lessons Learned”) even my favorite bloggers are are piling on to attack Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker. I understand why it’s almost irresistible, but I think it’s wrong.
I am no close friend of Stewart Baker‘s, but I have had dealings with him over a period of years starting when he was the General Counsel of the NSA. I have a great respect for his intelligence, integrity and for his legal skill — three comments I would make about far too few members of the current administration. You want competence in government? This is your guy.
Stewart and I disagree on many many issues of substance, but unlike the man he currently serves, Stewart has always been willing to engage with his critics and indeed is a regular speaker at Computers, Freedom and Privacy — a place where his views regularly put him in a minority of little more than one.
There’s evidence for the proposition that the post-9/11 Baker is a lot more hard-line than the guy I got to know in the cryptography wars. I suspect our views today diverge even more than they did when I knew him better. Nevertheless, I would have far more confidence in this government, and sleep much better at night, if we had a government full of people of his caliber.
Leave off, guys.
UPDATE: Someone wrote in to say that the “director of lessons learned” is a Stuart Baker, who is not the Stewart Baker I know. Being in London with a very unreliable and slow wifi connection leeched off a nearby hotel, I lack the tools to verify/disprove this contention but thought I should mention it. Anyone who finds out more is invited to comment.
I am far away on a very very slow link, but from what I can tell the announcement that the USA will henceforth again adhere to a key part of its obligations under the Geneva convention looks like a big victory for the rule of law.
And, yes, there can be devils in the details. (But I do agree that there is nothing at all inherently wrong with *properly constituted* courts martial to hear the status claims of POWs and other detainees. Quite the contrary. And a big step up from what they’ve been getting.)
My holiday, which began yesterday, has not started well. The last of the last-minute pre-departure things on my list was to bring in the wooden rocking bench that usually sits on my front porch. I have to bring it in because it could be a danger in the event of a hurricane while we are away. So I remove the cushion on the rocker, and reveal … a whole lot of bugs. It’s termite swarming season in Florida, and I have a sick suspicion I know what these are. So I call the bug people, and … they’re closed for July 4. But I’m not taking that in the house.
But it gets worse.
We were scheduled to leave Miami on American airlines on a flight to Boston with a tight but tolerable connection to a flight to Manchester, UK.
A few minutes after the Miami flight was due to start boarding, the gate staff announced that there was an air traffic hold in Boston and that we’d be so late there was no point boarding. Probably very late. There, I thought, went the connection. But a minute later they countermanded that and said we should board after all — the pilot had accepted an alternate route.
So we boarded, pushed back a little late, the pilot came on and said that the new route would delay us about 20 minutes, we’d be 40 minutes late in all. That meant a sprint in the airport, but it was do-able. And we did it.
We boarded the second flight, taxied out to the runway….and the pilot came on to say there was a problem with the temperature sensor on the engine, and we’d have to go back for repairs. So we limped back to the gate. And waited for the ground crew. Then waited for them to report.
And after an hour or so, they did: we weren’t going anywhere. So we all exited into the terminal. By now it was well after 9pm, so Boston airport was basically closed. There were no open concessions. There were no more flights out of Boston to anywhere. There were only a few gate staff there to rebook and hotel us all. And I’m traveling with two tired (but so far well-behaved) kids.
By about 11pm I had made it to the head of the line. And I’d started only about a third of the way into it. I’d had the sense to book new seats by phone, so I’d gotten three of the last seats on July 5th’s flight to Manchester — 24 hours later. We got our hotel vouchers, $45 in meals which were supposed to feed three people for three meals. And we went to claim our luggage, which had been offloaded from the plane.
Two of our bags were there. One was not. No explanation as to why. No one authorized to go hunting for the missing bag (mine, not the kids). So after a dispiriting search and queuing for surly baggage service — did you know only supervisors are empowered to give you a toothbrush? — we made it to the airport hotel around midnight. Only be told they only had smoking rooms.
The kids’ room wasn’t that bad. Mine smelled like the inside of a cigar. I didn’t sleep much, and I’m still having nasal flashbacks.
The next morning we go back to the airport to hunt for the missing bag. In due course — without setting any land speed records — the day crew admits they might have an idea where in the bowels of the airport it is hiding, and go off to find it. And they do. So now I have to take this bag back to the hotel to join its brethren, and then the kids and I can play tourist in Boston for half a day.
Which we do, and which isn’t bad, but would be a lot more fun if any of us had any energy, or if the kids didn’t feel they were losing a day with their grandparents. The kids are being great, but it can’t be easy for them. I did manage to contact the bug company, and they’re going to survey us for termite infestations. They did say that even if there are termites on the bench, those guys won’t move to the house any time soon, as they’ll have plenty to eat. I guess that’s reassuring, in a way.
And now I’m back at the Boston airport, posting this, ready to try again. The folks at check-in assure me it’s a different plane, so maybe we’ll actually get there this time. If I don’t post for a while, that’s a sign we made it.
A veteran arrested for having a cup of coffee in a VA facility while wearing a “Veterans For Peace” T-shirt asks, Has This Country Gone Completely Insane? (via Ann Bartow)
Recent Bluessky Posts
Jotwell Blenderlaw