Category Archives: Musings

Today the Washington Post had a live chat with WorldCom CEO John Sidgmore. Sidgmore was asked “Where were you Mr. Sidgemore when all this was happening?” His weaselly answer:

was Chief Operations Officer during 1997 and 1998. Since that time I have had decreasing involvement in the operations of the company and played primarily a strategy role in mergers and acquisitions since that time. Over the last 2 years my role has been almost exclusively speaking at Internet conferences on behalf of WorldCom.

Wow, I wish I could get a job as COO of a multi-billion-dollar publicly listed corporation so that I can spend my time going to Internet conferences! Where do I get a deal like that?

Frankly, I think the man is lying through his teeth. It is not credible that such a large-scale fraud could be perpetrated by only three employees.

I finished the first chapter of the Exchange security book, and it’s now with the separate tech editor I’ve hired. It wouldn’t be fair to describe him as an anti-Microsoft bigot, but he has substantial security expertise and he has been known to give Microsoft a hard time. If my book can live up to his standards, it should do well.

Over on Dave Farber‘s IP list, Dana Blankenhorn raises an interesting question about the Worldcom mess. John Sidgmore is now the CEO of Worldcom. Before the meltdown, he was the COO and vice chairman; he used to be the CEO of UUnet and took the current position when Worldcom bought UUnet. Why has the media given Sidgmore a free pass? Why isn’t anyone saying “Hey, John, you were the COO. How come you didn’t know this was happening?”

Timothy Smith, another IP contributor, says that Sidgmore was largely out of the loop– after a falling-out with the CEO, “[Sidgmore] pretty much went off and did his own thing” from sometime in 1999 until the present. If I were a stockholder, I’d be outraged. As a consumer of the business press, it certainly makes me wonder why no one asked this reasonable question of Mr. Sidgmore. Maybe someone will.

As I was driving up I-75 on the way to Perrysburg, I began to wonder why the Marine Corps has been so successful, both as a fighting force and as a Washington constituency. Some of it is doubtless attributable to the heroic deeds for which the Corps is famed: Belleau Wood, Tripoli, Guadalcanal, Khe Sanh. Some of it is thanks to the Corps’ legendary esprit de corps. Some is undoubtedly due to Marines’ genius for self-promotion, whether intentional or otherwise. After the battle for Okinawa, James Forrestal (Secretary of the Navy) is reputed to have said “The raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five
hundred years”. [thanks to Michael Wellman for correcting my quote error!]

I think it’s more than that, though– I think the major portion of the Corps’ success has come from its focus. You don’t see Marines lobbying to be the lead agency for theater missile defense, like the Navy and Army. You don’t see them trying to take over strategic deterrence or control of space, like the Air Force. (Note to my blue-suited friends: the Air Force should own both of these missions, but the sight of zoomies back-stabbing the Navy is, shall we say, unseemly.) You don’t see mixed-gender basic training. The Marines focus on doing what they do: expeditionary combat, mixing infantry units with organic air and logistics. It’s worked well since 1775, although I admit that the Marines could learn some procurement lessons from the other services.

Dori Smith points to a fascinating essay, The Programming Soviet. Here’s a sample: “The Unix and Open Source worlds excel at improving life for programmers, not for users.” Worth reading, even if just to fuel up your rant generator.

Leave aside the sunshine and clear skies; today is a beautiful day for two reasons. One is that two legendary Exchange gurus, Chris Scharff and Kevin Angley, are both celebrating birthdays today (happy birthday, guys!), and the other is that the new version of Internet Explorer for Mac OS X has beautiful anti-aliased text that makes even crap look stunning.

David Hackworth is at it again, with a blistering article he originally wrote for GQ. The article’s first paragraph gives you a taste of his tone:

Nothing is more basic than Basic Combat Training. Basic to the ways of war. Basic to national security. Basic to the very survival of the United States. So how come Fort Jackson, the single largest producer of Basic grunts, male and female, is under the command of a general who piled up more friendly fire casualties than anyone else in Desert Storm?

It goes on from there to examine, or rather lambast, the current state of US Army basic training. I admit to a certain degree of Marine Corps bias, but…

Continue reading →

I got to the Seattle airport early, figuring that
between Boingo’s wireless and the
Delta
Crown Room that I’d be able to get some work done.
Of course, I didn’t count on the World Cup.
The TV was tuned to ESPN, which was broadcasting the

Korea-Italy game. I started watching just after the 23rd minute and ended up
watching, off and on, for the rest of regulation time.

Continue reading →

Peter & I were working at the Redmond office until about 9:30 PT last night. Seattle gets a bad rap for having lots of rain, and– true to form– it was mostly overcast most of the time I was here. However, in the summer months I’m always struck by how late daylight extends. Since I was born and raised in the South, and have lived there almost my entire life, I never cease to be a little disconcerted by the fact that at 9pm (or later!) it’s still light enough to read a newspaper. The Qur’anic definition of dawn is the time when you can distinguish a black thread from a white one, so I suppose the reverse is true. Using that logic, dusk here doesn’t fall until around 10pm, or later, this close to the summer solstice. Weird. The fact that it’s only about 60F outside doesn’t help, either.