What Comes Next? Try Brussin's blog

There's a new tech-oriented blog on the block and I'm betting it will become a "must-read" for anyone serious about Web 2.0, Business 2.0, and the whole intersection of technology and business. The blog is called "What Comes Next" and the blogger is David Brussin.

While David Brussin might not be a household name in high tech households, I would add the caveat "yet." I've been in the high tech field for over 25 years and have yet to encounter a sharper mind than Brussin's. It was no coincidence that he was named to the 2004 list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators by Technology Review, MIT's Magazine of Innovation. Brussin has that rare combination of a. technical brilliance (he was building serious commercial networks before he graduated from high school) and b. business acumen (he had co-founded two successful hi-tech startups before he was thirty, and both were snapped up by public companies).

Then there is c. he is very articulate. So, not only does Brussin come up with valuable and sometimes highly complex insights, he can put them into full sentences that are easily understood. Now, you sometimes meet people who have a or b or c. Occasionally you meet people with two of the three, but rarely do you encounter someone who has all three AND a sense of humor AND above average scores in tact and diplomacy.

So check out Brussin's blog. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Of all the Dumb Things: Patching XP for daylight saving change

For once there is an XP patch that has nothing to do with Microsoft programming errors! Thanks to the meddling of America's congress-critters, your Windows XP machine needs to be patched in the next 50 days or it will not properly reflect the change to Daylight Saving Time.

The XP patch is here but I suggest you read this Microsoft KnowledgeBase page first. It covers things that could go wrong and other Microsoft code.

When does Daylight Saving Time begin in 2007? March 11. Whaaauh? March? Yes, thanks to a law passed in August of 2005 as part of President Bush's mammoth energy bill, DST comes three weeks early in all states (except Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which observes DST even in Arizona, due to its large size across three states) [deep breath]).

With all the embedded OSes out there and just about everything we use running on code these days, a lot of it date-sensitive, the probability of a miniature Y2K event in 2007 is definitely not zero.

And guess what? Congress has the right to change DST back to the way it was if they don't like these new dates. Personally, just personally, I have never liked DST and think it is more trouble than it is worth. This would seem to prove my point. About the only change worth making to the dates that have existed unchanged for the last 20 years in America would have been to bring us in line with the Europeans (see the table here). But noooo, Bush had to be different-er.
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New Year is Here: So is new daylight saving timing

Here's a good trivia question to ask your friends? When does Daylight Saving Time begin in 2007?

The answer: March 11. Whaaauh? March? Yes, thanks to a law passed in August of 2005 as part of President Bush's mammoth energy bill, DST comes three weeks early in all states (except Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation, which observes DST even in Arizona, due to its large size across three states) [deep breath]).

With just about everything we use today running on some kind of software, a lot of which is date-sensitive, the probability of a miniature Y2K event in 2007 is definitely not zero. And guess what? Congress has the right to change DST back to the way it was if they don't like these new dates.

Personally, just personally, I have never liked DST and think it is more trouble than it is worth. This would seem to prove my point. About the only change worth making to the dates that have existed unchanged for the last 20 years in America would have been to bring us in line with the Europeans (see the table here). But noooo, Bush had to be different-er.

BTW, check my technology blog for word on updating Windows XP and other software to handle this change.
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Some Groups of Interest: Tilters and feet first fans

Have been having some very interesting communications lately from folks in two Yahoo Groups that have some overlapping interest in gyro vehicles. If you are not familiar with Yahoo Groups they are an interesting hybrid of forum and mailing list that can be very useful for several different communication needs.

(For example, I belong to one computer security related group that sends out one email per week to all members. That's all. Other people use the Yahoo group system as more of an opt-in discussion list--membership can be more tightly controlled than many forums. The nice thing is that you don't have to you get every single message that goes out to the list, you can get a weekly digest of all postings.)

With that in mind, you might want to consider these two groups:

Tilting: "This group is for sharing information and ideas about Tilting vehicles. HPV and all power source enthusiasts are welcome, but please focus on the CHASSIS."

Feet Forward: "This mailing list is for the discussion of Feet Forward motorcycles in all their shapes and forms. This covers both the various mega-scooters such as the Honda Helix, Foresight, Yamaha Majesty, Suzuki Burgman and Piaggio Hexagon but also the various low volume and prototype FFs such as the Ecomobile, Quasar, Phasar, Voyager and so on."

There is also an interesting web site that focuses on feet forward designs.

Happy surfing!
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I'm Loving IT: Humor for geeks

Recently I was writing a column about computers and romance for the February--as in Valentine's Day--issue of a regional 'lifestyle' magazine (how I get talked into these things I don't know). Anyway, it brought to mind one of my favorite Dilbert cartoons. That same cartoon also came to mind when I was writing my previous post about 'loving technology.' But then I discovered something sad, a lot of young people had never seen the cartoon. And then I figured out why: it first appeared in 1995! Heck, some CTOs weren't even teenagers then. So, here it is:

And as an added bonus, here is a link that leads to just about every Dilbert strip ever, arranged in superbly simple one-click reading order. You can waste spend literally hours reading these.

In some ways the early- to mid-nineties were the golden age of Dilbert and I encourage you to stock up on some of the collections from that period (Shave the Whales is a good place to start). Here's a list to get you started. Enjoy! And remember, if the boss catches you reading Dilbert, you are doing anti-competitive lifestyle market research by thinking outside the box and running a straw man up the flagpole to see which way the wind blows in order to optimize the mission statement going forward, thus getting all hands onboard with the primary goal setting agenda-ism.

Health Care Dollars: Got your missing billions right here

Further evidence today to support my theory that the free market is an inefficient provider of health care. Happened on a short article in today's business section of the Florida Times Union. Just a one page piece about a small local company, E&S, with operations mostly located in Amelia Island and seven employees. What do they do? They work on behalf of hospitals to collect money that insurance companies owe them (and would not pay them without prompting--keeping that money to themselves). E&S has just five clients right now. Pretty small stuff huh?

Well consider this, last year the company identified about $850 million in under-reported claims for its clients. That's right $850 million! For just 5 clients! Using just 7 people! The implications are many and some of them are amazing. The cynic in me wants to buy stock in E&S because you just don't see many business models this good (the company had revenues of about $1 million per employee, taking a 25% cut of the amount collected for clients).

But think of how much waste this implies. There are about 6.000 hospitals in America. Some 3,000 are medium to large hospitals (100 or more beds). There are 900 with over 300 beds. Even if we assume that the 5 clients of E&S each have 4 large hospitals the math is pretty staggering: Over $120,000 in uncollected insurance money per hospital bed. There are about 950,000 hospital beds in American hospitals. Total uncollected insurance money could easily top $100 billion.

What a waste!

PS/2 to USB Adapters Don't

Just bought a couple of small converter plugs that allow you to plug a PS/2 keyboard into a USB socket. But guess what? They don't work. I have scoured the net to find out why and the basic answer seems to be that PS/2 to USB adapters are a kludge and very unpredictable (people use them for mice as well as keyboards, apparently with very mixed results).

Boo hiss I say. I wanted to use my lovely old IBM PS/2 keyboard on my laptop to reduce the wrist strain from all this blogging, but noooo. Looks like it ain't gonna happen. Now I have to go through the whole send-it-back process. What a pain. If things are known not to work reliably they should say on the package: May not work with all PS/2 devices. I would have given these things a miss and carried on my search for a good USB keyboard.