“I always say that in investing you want to buy stock in a company that has a business that’s so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will. We have a country like that.”  - Warren Buffet

I had a follow-on call from the President’s office at T-mobile today.  They sorted out a way to get us G1 phones to try on our business account.  They are shipping them at a discounted rate, and sending a few extra sim cards (as I lost mine) for free.  Representative was very professional and customer oriented once I was able to talk to him live (as opposed to the voicemail message I describe below).

Interestingly, the same rep that left me a VM with all the negatives of the G1 and tried to move us to purchase new Blackberries, explained to me today that he has the G1 and he loves it.  Go figure.  I guess he was just following the script before.

Regardless, well played T-mobile.  Well played.

Rackspace today announced a series of cloud computing initiatives including storage (in competition with Amazon S3).  Great news.  Competition is good.

They also announced they acquired Jungledisk, which is the tool I use to access my S3 account.  Having Jungledisk support Rackspace cloud will be nice, but I hope they don’t eliminate or diminish the S3 support as I am dependent on Jungledisk at this point.  Only time will tell, but the thought of Jungledisk moving away from S3 support makes me nervous.

I continue to be amazed at how shortsighted technology companies can be with regards to providing services to business customers.  My recent experience with T-mobile is a perfect example.  My company uses T-mobile as our corporate cell phone carrier and with our recent move to Google hosted premium email services, we decided it would be great to test the G1 as a replacement phone for our standard Blackberries.  Unfortunately, T-mobile has decided to not make the G1 available for business customers.  Here are the steps it took to figure that out.

1)  Sent an email to our local store representative.  He noted that the G1 would not be in stores in our area as it is only being launched in 3G cities.  Recommends I try online.

2)  Log into our online account and are told we are not eligible for the phone and are given a toll-free number to call.

3)  Call the toll-free number and am told it is not available via phone order and to try online.  After telling the representative that online doesn’t work, he gives me an email for business care.

4)  Email business care and never get a response.  At this point, I am frustrated and have just about given up when a friend says I should email the CEO and gives me his email address.

5)  Drop an email to the CEO expressing my frustration as a business customer not being able to get this phone.  It seems to me that someone who spends thousands a month should be entitled to buy the same phone available to the average consumer customer.

6)  I get an immediate email back from T-mobile executive services, which surprises me.  Asks for my account information so they can help.

7)  Email my account information to them and explain reasons for wanting the phone and that we use Google for email anyway, so G1 should be a good fit.

8)  Receive a voicemail from a T-mobile rep where he states that the G1 is not available to business customers, but that we should look at the negative aspects of the G1 which he says is primarily the lack of enterprise email support.  He also goes on to recommend that we look at the new Blackberries and we don’t really need to the G1.

A couple of things come to mind.  First, good on T-mobile for being responsive to notes sent to the CEO.  Second, it amazes me that the representative would try to push us to BB when I made it clear we wanted a G1.  Lastly, it is a shame that business customers are treated as second-class citizens by T-mobile and that this phone is not being made available to us.  I am sure this will change as phones hit the stores, but major fail for T-mobile thus far.  Maybe we should look at corporate iPhones?

Another good article on Gray Goose in the Washington Post.

Will terrorists go nuclear?  That is the essential questioned posed by counterterrorism expert Brian Jenkins in a book of the same title.

Jenkins has written a sobering and critical analysis of this question that spans over his decades of research on the topic.  In fact, the book shares the title of a research paper Jenkins wrote over 30 years ago and it is that essay he uses as the entrance point for his observations.  The issue of nuclear terrorism is one that has haunted policy makers, enriched movie producers, and fevered American apprehension for 30 years and the strength of Jenkins book is his categorical and tempered analysis of how each of these complex areas play into the nuclear terrorism debate.

Playing the role of mythbuster, Jenkins dives deep to determine the seeding point for a large number of nuclear terrorism memes that have propagated over the past decade.  Upon examination, Jenkins finds that some of the memes are just that, organic ideas that developed a life of their own or had strategic sponsorship by individuals who were in a position to benefit from the propagation of the meme.  Readers should draw some comfort from the thoughtful analysis and debunking of some of our most terrifying concerns.

In his analysis of terrorist motives, operational concepts and evolution Jenkins dissects the core issues in a way that few terrorism analysts can.  This book will speak not only to his peers, but is very accessible to the general audience and it is this audience that Jenkins seems obligated to inform with this book.

That assumption brings us to the final and most essential element of the book, which is Jenkins’ differentiation between “nuclear terrorism” and “nuclear terror”.  Nuclear terrorism is the threat that must be addressed by Western democracies through sound counterterrorism and non-proliferation policies.  Nuclear terror is the state of perpetual societal fear that is exploited to erode civil liberties and generate apprehension within democracies.  Of course, the fundamental question is how much apprehension can we cope with before the fundamental components of our society become unrecognizable.

Jenkins book is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in this essential subject and should be required reading for consumers of popular culture (the TV show 24, for example) that propagate the nuclear terrorism meme, or anyone who finds the concept of nuclear terrorism “terrifying”.

Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? is available for purchase from Amazon.

I still show this video in my class every semester at Georgetown.  Nice to see it digitized:

Solar Sunrise:  Dawn of a New Threat

This is exactly my frustration with the current market crisis we are currently going through.  Those that facilitated the crisis with irresponsible risky behavior are free of any sort of financial risk.  It is all reward, no risk at the leadership level and this introduces what I believe are unacceptable consequences.  Take a look at the list of multi-millionaires created through management failures.  Required reading here.

Which is exactly why we need to re-establish a link between risk and reward in public companies. The first step should be the following law:

If the government must step in and provide any sort of financing or guarantees for any part of a public company’s business, then all officers and directors lose all rights to severance pay and all outstanding vested or unvested options or warrants immediately become canceled. In the event the CEO of such corporation is not fired, but instead chooses to step down voluntarily, then the last 12 months of earnings is considered to be an interest free loan which the CEO must pay back over no more than a 10 year period.

2.1 update is a major improvement for me.  My 10 hour backup was reduced to 2 minutes.

I envy my friend Eric who will only ever know an iPhone with 2.1.