The NYTimes has suddenly discovered that cell service sucks because bandwidth demand is outpacing supply. Good story, except it’s been true since at least 1994…

If you’re concerned about the way your government conducts wars in your name, you need to read this unbelievable piece about the First Gulf War.

Here’s why I believe it:

• I know and am proud to have worked with Leon Daniel. When he asks a question, it’s a good one, and he rarely stops until he gets a good answer.
  
• Patrick Sloyan, like Daniel, is a UPI vet with impeccable credentials — like a Pulitzer Prize from 1992, back when a story had to be true in order to win a Pulitzer.
  
• Why else would the U.S. Government take such pains to hide a war from its own people? From the SF Chronicle:

More than 150 reporters who participated in the Pentagon pool system failed to produce a single eyewitness account of the clash between 300,000 allied troops and an estimated 300,000 Iraqi troops. There was not one photograph, not a strip of film by pool members of a dead body — American or Iraqi.

Unbelievable. But not nearly unbelievable enough.

Ken Cron was the guy running CMP Publications when I was Editor of NetGuide. He was also the guy running it when I left. Read into that what you want.

Somehow, according to the New York Times, he has wound up at the right hand of Barry Diller, running the media properties that Vivendi couldn’t figure out: its Universal film, television, music, theme park and game businesses. Annual sales amount to $12.5 Billion. With a B.

The paper asks, quite rightly, Who is this guy? and attempts to dig out the answer. They do get some good background, but miss the guy’s naked opportunism. This is the guy who. as Michael Wolff tells in his book Burn Rate, spent $1 million in 1993 in the apparent belief that he was buying the Internet. (What he bought was a list of AOL “Go” words and the right — which wasn’t Wolff’s to sell — to start a magazine called NetGuide.)

If you want an unbiased opinion of Ken Cron, you’re at the wrong weblog. From what I understand, Barry Diller and Ken Cron deserve each other.

(Ten points if you laughed at the headline, by the way.)

Yes, I know I’ve been among the absent. Two reasons:

1. I’ve been busy. Truly.


2. I’m so disheartened by this Fall’s elections that I scarcely know where to begin, and (relatedly)


3. I’m talking to some interesting people about some interesting jobs, and the last thing I want to do is blog myself out of employment. I wrote in 1995 about a friend who broke off a budding relationship because she didn’t like what she saw about the guy in question on Altavista; this is a lesson I take to heart.

Nonetheless, there’s some stuff worth writing about and pointing out. It follows.

 debacle ð \dee-BAH-kul or dee-BACK-ul\ ð (noun)
1 : a tumultuous breakup of ice in a river
2 : a violent disruption (as of an army) : rout
3 a : a great disaster *b : a complete failure : fiasco

I’m sure the timing was a coincidence, and had nothing at all to do with Tuesday’s events.

Something very odd and disturbing is going on near my old stomping grounds….

They were filming a movie over on the next block last night: Mona Lisa Smile, it’s called. Looks like a chick flick. It’s apparently scheduled for release this time next year.

A flyer from the production company said they were doing one scene: a woman walking down a rainy 1950s street and going into a building. It was about 40 degrees and windy last night. I wouldn’t have wanted to be out in the rain, fake or otherwise. Trailers took over parking places for about two or three blocks surrounding the set, and the entire block where they were shooting was blocked off.

The last major film to be made around here was Two Weeks Notice, coming to a multiplex near you next month. That one took over the Fulton Ferry landing for most of a week; apparently there’s a big party scene with Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. Most production companies are good about telling location residents what they’re up to and how long they’ll be up to it. This one didn’t, and there were lots of steamed neighbors and tourists. Also a lot of disappointed Asian newlyweds, a steady stream of whom get wedding pictures taken at Fulton Ferry.

Sometimes, the speed of global commerce takes my breath away.

IBM just replaced a hard drive for me under warranty. (IBM’s warranty service, by the way, is a thing of beauty.) I shipped them the busted drive around the 10th of this month; the replacement arrived today. It’s a remanufactured unit, not unusual for a warranty replacement. It was re-built earlier this month in Hungary, and found its way to Brooklyn by way of Malaysia and Union City, California.

Best I can tell, the drive left Asia on the 16th — two days after IBM got the defective unit. And remember, cargo still isn’t moving off the West Coast very easily these days.

When I was Deputy Editor of Time Digital about four years ago, I tried to order up an infographic map illustrating the delicate global supply web that results in the delivery of a home PC, pinpointing the most vulnerable links. Reporters there rejected the idea, saying it was just too much work. Slackers. It’d make a hell of a piece.

Microsoft chose New York City to launch the new version of its online service, MSN 8.0. Lucky us.

As part of its campaign, Microsoft has plastered its MSN butterfly logo all over town, in places where it most assuredly doesn’t belong. (They’ve also taken an immense online media buy, featuring a figure who looks remarkably — and probably accidentally — like Arthur, the Tick‘s accountant sidekick. OK, so Arthur’s technically a moth. So what?)

The timing was not good. Two days previously, the city had scraped off Nike decals that appeared around town. Last year, IBM’s “Peace Love Linux” campaign mysteriously appeared on sidewalks all over the place. That one, at least, was chalk and lasted only until the next rain.

A flak for Waggner Edstrom insisted to a NYTimes reporter that the company had a permit to deface the city, but could/would not produce it or name the agency that issued it. New York being New York, I’d bet that WagEd paid some money to someone who said they could help but was just making it up. Just another rube in the Big City.

From the Times (whose web site is carrying a ton of MSN ads, by the way):

“This is nothing more than corporate graffiti,” said Vanessa Gruen, director of special projects for the Municipal Art Society, a civic organization that has long battled commercialization of public space. “It’s no better than all those kids out there tagging subway cars.”

And no more legal, city officials said.

Microsoft was fined … (wait for it) … $50. So it’s symbolic. Given that Microsoft has $40 billion in the bank, it’s hard to imagine an amount that wouldn’t be symbolic. And the last thing the city would want to do would be to fine Microsoft enough to engage it in a lawsuit.

Dan Gillmor of the Merc has an excellent interview with Mitch Kapor about his new software venture. Apparently Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original Mac programmers and one of the brains behind the innovative General Magic user interface, is on board.

This promises to be extremely interesting.