Category: Uncategorized

Last weekend, we joined friends for the movie version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Last year, we saw the play, which gave me an (ahem) appetite for the film. The leads aren’t wonderful singers in this musical, but the tone of the story comes through. Tim Burton as director means you recognize a style and a setting throughout. Like the Coen brothers, Burton marks his films with his vision. This story is bloody, gory, visceral and Burton spares you not a spurt of blood. Gun violence is, I admit, somewhat common on screen. Here, as Johnny Depp sings and slices, you have to keep your eyes open almost a la Clockwork Orange to watch every murder. With all that, wow… quite a movie. Big-screen worthy. Metacritic delivered an appropriate score: 83.

When I saw this recent headline Aruba to buy ‘Switzerland of network management’, I cringed and knew I had to share this tiny rant.

Too many people in technology want to be “Switzerland.”

Nothing against the Swiss or their beautiful country, but this terrible shorthand needs to expire. No one should aim for that position, even if you can build a business there in the short term. When technology companies tout their position as Switzerland, what they intend to signal is their independence and the powerful position their neutrality confers upon them. How being a crossroads for transactions (network or financial or otherwise) is a sustainable position even when few of the endpoints appreciate having a third-party in the stream of business.

What being “Swiss” in this context really means:

• I’m late, so I have to work with everyone else who got there first.
• I was early, but my attempt at dominating the marketplace didn’t pan out, so I’ll play nice with others now.
• My business is small and at the mercy of those on my “borders,” whether technical or economic.

Switzerland is fundamentally a defensive position. You react to others and stay small enough so none of the big players in your market care to challenge your tenuous position. Your only offensive moves are to keep smaller players from replacing you, because Switzerland in the technical marketplace isn’t an exclusive position. Rather, supporting the market leader’s customers’ needs is often a requirement for all entrants, whether they explicitly aim to replace the market leader or build a complementary business. So, everyone (even the market leaders) includes as much “neutrality” as the market forces them to support.

If you must use a geographical analogy, consider this.

When you think of Microsoft or Google or Oracle, what country do you imagine as representative of their market positions?

It’s not Switzerland.

Future musing: in the new world geography and economy, will Dubai replace Switzerland as the code word for the nexus of money and cultures and platforms?

Personal note: perhaps I should have been more concerned about CNET’s prospects when I read this BusinessWeek interview back in 2004.

Where A Looking-Glass War disappointed, A Small Town in Germany restored my interest in Le Carré.

The “small town” is Bonn, the sterile capital of West Germany in those rebuilding years. Chasing down a possible defector from the British Embassy in the midst of a resurgence of German nationalism awakens the ire and interest in the security officer charged with the task. We never meet the target of the chase, but his life and motives and the full explanation of what’s going on behind the scenes emerge. Not what I expected, and all the better for it.

I’m still going to take a break from post-war espionage, though.

I knocked off John Le Carré’s The Looking-Glass War a few weeks ago. It’s tale of bumbling and bureaucracy in a relatively minor army intelligence department, trying to recapture its World War II prominence. According to Wikipedia:

John le Carré has stated that this novel is his most realistic portrayal of the intelligence world as he knew it and that this was one reason for its relative lack of success.

That makes altogether too much sense. When turf wars and politics mix with intelligence, well, we’re living with the results. So the process is hardly good escapist fun. Le Carré usually manages to nab my attention and interest all the same…but no amount of human touches make this bleak story compelling. I was glad to put it down.

(These three are courtesy DaringFireball.) I rarely play games on the computer, but Peggle comes recommended if I ever change my mind. While the main theme is ranging all over the Mac world, I mostly listened to the music at the bottom. I didn’t know about the Flickr guest pass either.

Seth Godin and Hugh Macleod converse, covering lots of ground. One tidbit:

Question from Hugh: A lot of your books seem to be continuations of conversations you started with your seminal book, “Purple Cow”. Meatball Sundae I’d say would qualify, as would “Free Prize Inside” and “All Marketers Are Liars”. But then your last book, “The Dip”, was about something relatively unrelated. Do you find yourself, as an author, often feeling pulled in two different directions?

Answer from Seth: I worry about Neal Stephenson and I worry about Robert Parker.

Snowcrash and Diamond Age were brilliant books, seminal stuff that actually changed the world. That gave Neal the power to pretty much write what he wanted, but what he wants to write, it turns out I don’t want to read. I think he lost a great opportunity and I feel the loss.

Robert Parker hit it big with Spenser novels, but every one is so similar, I can’t remember which ones I’ve read and which ones I haven’t.

(snip)

Separately, Godin notes: “The web is like crack for someone with ADD, I’ll tell you that.”

I care little about Ruby or Rails, but I do want to make time for a good rant.

A wonderful reminder about reading: teach the kids to love the act, and worry about what they read later. The boy’s devouring words, and the girl is clearly on the verge of making the jump. Letters are old news, and words are starting to become known objects. I can’t wait. Selfishly, I’d like to leave Clifford behind. Generously, I envy her the jump into millions of “nows” — those moments you can’t experience yourself, except through a book.

Another John Le Carré, Call for the Dead blends espionage with procedural. Less than 150 pages in paperback, but a fine read. George Smiley’s introduction is pedestrian: even the opening chapter’s title is dry, “A brief history of George Smiley.”

Wonder if Le Carré had any premonition he would be writing novels with Smiley involved one way or another for decades?

Call for the Dead takes place all in England. The interaction between the spy service and the police is delicate, and successful only because of personal connections overcoming institutional edginess (not quite outright rivalry). The Spy Who Came In from the Cold harkens back to these events, expanding on an event (turning an East German agent) that isn’t quite there, but could have been.

Whatever. This mystery turns the pages.

Thanks to Neal Stephenson (1, 2, 3), Isaac Newton interests me.

Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott, was a Books Inc. recommendation when I was in the store early last month. It’s a murder mystery in the 20th century infused with Newton’s early alchemical explorations at Cambridge in the 17th century. The tactic of addressing the story to the in-novel author’s lover annoyed me occasionally, and the mystery itself is rather mundane after so much effort to mash science and mysticism.

There is a short “Further Reading” section, which includes a link to the Newton Project…something for future exploration.

Never heard about You Kill Me before it showed up in the house, but mildly entertaining movie. The 64 on Metacritic is accurate, but if you’re in the mood for near-mindless, almost-dark comedy, you could do worse.

Téa Leone and Sir Ben Kingsley are the stars, but Bill Pullman is funny. It’s hard to watch Ben Kingsley in anything and not think of Gandhi. When the role is an alcoholic hit man trying to dry out, in part while working in a funeral home, you’re able to forget Mahatma for a bit. 😉

Congratulations to Isabel and Cort on the new arrival. I hope the older sister learns to appreciate her new sister quickly.

A 53 might be the lowest Metacritic score of any movie I’ve watched. Goal “earned” its way to the bottom. The movie was on my Netflix queue because it was a pitched as a Rocky on the soccer field. In its outline, yes, that’s true. Other than making Newcastle seem scenic, Goal is simply trying to sell soccer (football). An illegal immigrant from Mexico playing in a local league in Los Angeles is noticed by a visiting ex-Newcastle United player and one-time scout. Run through Rocky script, and guess who scores the winning goal over arch-rival Manchester United to earn a trip to the Champion’s League? I’m skipping several other cliches, but there you go. Propaganda for FIFA, plain and simple.

For the first movie of a supposed trilogy, wouldn’t you keep the original website working? Maybe Buena Vista Pictures (read: Disney) realized this wasn’t that good, either. I did find the actual website, and it’s touting the second part of the trilogy, coming this year. Oh goody!