For chance, Laurent (this URL is crazy!) told me before that I forgot to mention in my last post about our wakeboard experience on the lake of Zürich that I was talking about THE Laurent of the very well-known French site about .NET technology called Tech Head Brothers. To be sure that there is no possible misunderstanding remaining, I publish again the picture of Laurent (you know, this Laurent), trying to initiate a new kind of wakeboard-style called “submarine wakeboard”.

PS: Laurent, I know, there will be some reprisals from your side ;-) Anyway!

Three professors of Wharton tried to find out if it possible to quantify and to measure the quality and efficiency of Corporate Governance.

For chance, the answer is clearly NO. A kind of common sense, I think… Some extracts:

“Lots of people are coming up with governance scorecards […] They’re coming up with best practices and selling this stuff. As far as we can tell, there’s no evidence that those scorecards map into better corporate performance or better behavior by managers.”

[The three professors] do think corporate governance matters, but after puzzling over reams of company numbers, they are not confident that anyone can measure whether one firm’s governance is better than another’s at least, not by using typical metrics.

I specially like this one:

In the absence of effective measurement tools, investors who are trying to assess firms’ governance have to do it the old-fashioned way. That is, they have to do their homework, examining companies one at a time.

Source: Corporate Governance by the Numbers: It Doesn’t Work

Some days ago, I explained that we had some fun in Zürich with some of my colleagues. We began with a McDo, have a look here :-) After the McDo, we did some wakeboard on the Zurich’s lake. Lorenz was really good:

I could start after the third try, somehow still “tense” :-)

Laurent tried a new kind of wakeboard called “submarine wakeboard”, also named “plouf wakeboard” ;-)

[Via vowe]

IBM can be really funny and, in a way, completely ridiculous.

Although IBM is very strongly implemented in the industry I’m working for (insurance), we are using succesfully BEA Weblogic since more than 4 years. I must say I really like the contacts we had with this company and the technology vision they are implementing. A great integrated product!

On the other side, you have IBM with its Websphere product-line, not really integrated (at least ;-), not very convincing to my mind, but quite a good success on the market. Now the following example – how to enable security in a Websphere portal – is really convincing me that we are on the good way ;-) I know, I know, it’s just an example… Do not forget to have a look at the last sentence – These steps are not supported and are provided as is. The cherry on the cake :-)

Installation for LDAP setup:

—————————-

1. Install WebSphere Application Server Developer.

2. Update WebSphere Application Server Developer to Version 5.1.0.1

3. Install interim fixes.

4. Install Portal Toolkit and test environment.

5. Update WebSphere Portal to Version 5.0.2 by installing Fix Pack 2.

6. To set up the test environment (Test1) . perform these steps:

a. Start the workbench.

b. Create a portal through wizards.

c. Deploy that portlet in the test environment without security enabled.

7. Setup the wpconfig.properties file with the following parameters (use defaults for all other parameters):

– WasUserid=uid=wpsbind,cn=users,dc=ibm,dc=com

– WasPassword=wpsbind

– PortalAdminId=uid=wpsadmin,cn=users,dc=ibm,dc=com

– PortalAdminPwd=wpsadmin

– PortalAdminGroupId=cn=wpsadmins,cn=groups,dc=ibm,dc=com

– LTPAPassword=wpsbind

– LDAPHostName=amtam.itso.ral.ibm.com

– LDAPAdminPwd=

– LDAPBindID=uid=wpsbind,cn=users,dc=ibm,dc=com

– LDAPBindPassword=wpsbind

– LDAPSuffix=dc=ibm,dc=com

8. After LDAP configuration, execute the wpsconfig.bat tasks

stop-portal-server, stop-admin-server

9. Start WebSphere Portal by executing wpsconfig.bat task start-portal-server and logon.

10. Stop the portal server again and start the existing server in WebSphere Application

Studio Developer.

11. The server start will fail. (Note: there are no security settings yet. Even if you manually

insert security settings, the server start still fails.

12. Delete the existing test server and create a new one. Security settings will be

automatically inserted. Start the test server.

These steps only work if the wpsadmin password is wpsadmin. If you change the password, you need to update the wps-info.xml file. The userid and password in a server configuration are stored in the following file:

servers\YourServerName.wpc\wps-info.xml

The password is encrypted. If you remove {xor} from the line of password, you can input the password in ASCII directly, such as: wpsadmin.

These steps are not supported and are provided as is.

Very interesting article from Knowledge@Wharton about the future competition between Microsoft and Apple in the field of the online music.

• The overall digital music sales market represents in 2004 about $270 million. By 2009, this market will represent 12% of consumer music spending, i.e. $1.7 billion! (Source: JupiterResearch)
• The current market situation cannot be clearer: Apple holds 70% of the market share with iTunes. It sold 125 million songs since the launch of the Windows version in 2003. Apple offers today a catalogue of about 1 million songs.
• Though this strong strategic starting position, Apple could be confronted with at least two strategic possible issues in the future: first, Apple can repeat the same error as in the past with its OS and the Macintosh, i.e. a closed system which works exclusively with its own Hardware ; second, iTunes is only a download platform, it seems that no streaming functionality is planned…

Some extracts:

Wharton professors say that Apple, by not opening its iTunes format to other music players, could be repeating the mistake it made with its operating systems (OS) for Apple and Macintosh computers back in the 1970s and 1980s. The fact that Apple’s OS software was a closed system that worked only with its own hardware – in contrast to Microsoft, which licensed its operating system software widely and eventually emerged as the industry standard – isolated Apple.

If Microsoft and other services can convince consumers that monthly subscription services are better than downloading songs a la carte, Apple could face problems since it apparently has no plan to offer a streaming music service.

“Microsoft will ultimately be cheaper because it’s not out to sell hardware,” says Clemons. “It usually starts out badly in a new market, but then it either gets better or it terrifies the competition.” Usually it does both.

Outch!

The Firefox v1.0 Preview Release is now available. BE CAREFUL, a lot of themes and extensions from v0.9.3 are not compatible with this one and their updates are not already published!

PS: you can find my review of Firefox here.

Loic posted a great article about the economical development in China on last Sunday. If you think that China is going to have an impact on us – or specially if you don NOT think so – I recommend strongly the reading of this article!

Some extracts:

China has grown at 8% per year for many years, it is the sixth economy in the World. The standard of living has improved dramatically with an average per capita income above $1000, it was only $300 twenty years ago. 400 million Chinese are now above the global poverty line.

What strikes me the most is how unprepared the US and Europe are to China’s growth. The impact of China’s economic development is now already huge on the Global Economy. The first consequence that is very often seen is of course jobs being transferred to China but the impact of China’s internal demand for energy for example is equally important, China is for example now the second largest importer of oil and second largest electricity consumer. This has an impact on global energy prices and it will only increase.

The technology education available in China is according to Robert to World Class Standards. China graduates 2 to 2.5 million students a year and 60% of them are in the technology sector, where India graduates 1 million for 50% in technology and the USA 2 million a year with only 25% in technology.

We mostly think about toys or clothes production when we think about China. China has become the manufacture of the World but with such high standards of education and such a high number of highly qualified technology graduates China is now ready to move to the next step and create World Class leaders and companies. It would be a big mistake to consider China’s competition to the US, Europe and Japan as low cost subcontracting capabilities only.

Seen from the US and Europe, the threat is generally understood as loosing jobs subcontracted in China. It should probably be understood more as new fast moving Chinese companies created and not only addressing their local market but becoming new leaders.

Great visit today in an impressive and beautiful place!

Monkey Mountain is more than 280 monkeys living in total freedom in 24 ha of forest and meadow. Walking along the paths, you are transported into a different world through direct contact with the monkeys who don’t hesitate to come and take the popcorn, distributed at the entrance, from the palm of your hand.

The path takes you through a splendid forest; a 24 ha protected area where the monkeys live. Forest paths, cleared and laid out for visitors, take you through the park, leaving large areas reserved for the animals, space they need to rest in peace and quiet.

Barbary Macaques are today considered an endangered species. […] A recent estimate of the living population shows that the wild population represents 10’000 monkeys in Algeria and Morocco (down from 23’000 in 1978). The Monkey Mountain is strongly committed to the protection of the species by :

raising public awareness of the protection of Barbary Macaques by presenting them in a setting very similar to their natural habitat

developing educational actions (see inter-active boards and games, booklets, guides, etc)

creating and preserving an invaluable genetic pool with the population present in the park

strengthening wild populations by re-introducing entire groups of monkeys. Ever since the Park opened; some 600 monkeys coming from our three parks were reintroduced into their natural habitat Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Source: Monkey Mountain

Already the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack of the Twin-Towers. Some pictures are better than words.

These pictures were taken by Bill Biggart (excepted the last one) who died when the second Tower felt down. I recommend you to have a look at the Bill Biggart’s last exposures. Very impressive.

Bill was killed when the second building came down, and he was crushed under all the debris. I don’t know if he jumped back under the underpass, or whether the direct debris killed him. We know in his last picture he was working to the very end, and that’s telling of the commitment he had to his work.

Weblog-Conversations

Weblogs form networks between eachother: Webloggers read other weblogs and will often use this material to write up own pieces. A free-flowing conversation ensues between the authors and members of the audience who chime in. Technologies such as “TrackBack” (which displays “inbound links” to a particular post, that is: references to a particular post from other entries in other locations that reference it) or referrer-lookup (analysing where traffic came from, made possible by analysing server-logfiles or special web-based tools, such as technorati.com) make it possible to track these discussions across multiple weblogs. New participants can join the discussion anytime by commenting or writing an entry on their own weblog. These conversations are self-organising and only moderated decentrally by the individual weblog-authors.

Weblogs and Networking

By reading someone elses weblog readers get to know the writer very well. It can be seen that webloggers who read eachother and use their weblogs to converse with eachother are building up trust. As a consequence, they are collaborating and forming networks (see Zijlstra, 2003).

Weblogs can be seen as a “Personal Presence Portal”: They are an online representation of a knowledge worker’s presence and serve as an access point to his work and thoughts. Also, they provide access to other forms of getting in contant, such as email, instant messaging or meeting face-to-face. (Zijlstra, 2004)

Conclusion

Source: Knowledge Work Processes and Support for them through Weblogs