raif’s random rants…

as you may have already seen it, Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, recently wrote an article titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business” . it’s an interesting read… it’s in support of his new book coming out in 2009, titled “FREE” … for those who remember, the whole long tail thing had started with one of his articles as well… it’s a pretty dubious marketing & distribution model for a book… what is the mission of wired? objective journalism of the innovative edge? or pushing chris anderson’s books? anyways, i guess the model works… i don’t think this new article is anything earth shattering, nothing nearly as impactful as the long tail discussion… but a review of that article, this post is not…

i am taking game theory this semester, the most demanded course in the berkeley mba curriculum… not only due to the intriguing subject matter, but mostly due to the professor who teaches it, and the awards he has won for his teaching: professor john morgan. this course plays a key role in teaching us to be strategic thinkers, to look forward and reason back before our actions and many other tools that any strategist will need throughout their careers… john morgan is an incredible lecturer, and a very smart man, we’ve all been pretty amazed by our experience so far…

in our most recent game theory lecture, we discussed the browser wars (ie vs netscape) of the late 90’s and the impact of IE being free (bundled with windows) and the role it played in crushing netscape. after the class, i felt chris anderson’s free article would be relevant, so i forwarded it to john morgan… and his response confirmed by man crush on john morgan:

“How much will the book cost?”

I would love to hear chris anderson’s and his publisher hyperion’s response to this, and see if they actually would have the guts to walk the talk… my gut says they wouldn’t…

my fav soccer team FENERBAHCE beat the UEFA cup winners sevilla from Spain to make it to the quarter finals of the uefa champion’s league… this is history in the making… it was a nail biter of a match… i wish i could’ve been there… it would have been a story that i never got sick of re-telling…

goals of the game:

and here are the penalty shots that broke the tie:

over a month ago, before the first super tuesday, i predicted that mccain and hillary would be the presidential nominees. mccain first beat romney and then huckabee to validate my guess… tonight’s primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island was more of a formality to clinch his nomination…

on the democratic front, the last few weeks weren’t as supportive of my bullish prediction of the new york senator as obama swept 12 contests in a row… tonight things seem to have turned around. although fuzzy delegate math may alter the outcome, the populist vote seems to agree with me… it’ll be interesting to see when and how this will be called. i don’t think the democratic party wants this to come to the convention, but i’m not sure how it can be avoided…

there’s some talk about a joint ticket, but i think that may actually weaken the democratic ticket for the presidential race, as a fresh and neutral face would be better to supplement hillary or obama, rather than two bruised candidates with all the baggage of one brutal primary race…

disclaimer: i am turkish-canadian, not american. my thoughts on american politics have no practical purpose and are a complete outsider’s view. basically they don’t really matter. i tend to focus on american politics mostly because turkish politics are too depressing and canadian politics are too boring… if this post bothers you, just hit the big X on the top right corner of your browser window ;) peace.

as a canadian, I’ve always been led to believe that we paid a lot more in income taxes than our counter parts in the US.

as I near my graduation and face the decision of staying in california vs going back to toronto, I decided that I should dig into this and see what the gap was…

well, it turns out that you do pay a little more in ontario, but not as much as everyone will have you believe… in british columbia, the difference in negligable…

this calculation does ignore the higher sales tax we pay in canada which is 12% in BC and 13% in ontario compared to 7.25-8.75% in California.

however, when you couple this data with better public education, universal health care (compared to the 45M americans that don’t have any) and the lower cost of living compared to US metros (NY, LA. SF, Chicago), Toronto or Vancouver seem like a steal…

Sources:
- US Federal Tax Estimation from Roscoe & Swanson Accountancy - Quick Income Tax Calculator - http://www.rscpa.com/cgi-bin/taxcomp.cgi
- California Tax Estimation from Franchise Tax Board of California (State of California) - http://www.ftb.ca.gov/individuals/tax_table/index.asp
- Canada Federal & Ontario Tax Estimation from Ernst&Young Tax Calculator - http://www.ey.com/GLOBAL/content.nsf/Canada/Tax_-_Calculators_-_2007_Personal_Tax

i hate to say i said so, but just last week i claimed in a post that the iphone would not kill the blackberry.

this week rim announced that they’ve had an unexpected surge in subscriber growth for blackberry devices (WSJ article), in the meantime apple has significantly cut down its orders for the flash memory chips that it puts in its iphones and ipods (link)…

i still need to mention that my claim encompasses the enterprise and consumer smartphone markets put together. iphone will probably be stronger on the consumer side, but rim will not lose the enterprise battle - the bigger, more profitable and predictable part of the smartphone market.

living in berkeley, i will probably get lynched for posting this…

but the latest fiasco around obama’s borrowing of some of his speeches from massachusetts governor deval patrick, is something that cannot be ignored…

firstly, see the evidence.

first speech in question:

and the second speech in question:

and here is how the obama camp tries to play it down:

obama camp’s main claim is that obama had patrick’s permission to use his words. if that is so, then he should have disclosed that during his speech and not tried to freeride the rhetoric… is this the change america wants?

disclaimer: i am not american, but turkish-canadian. my thoughts on american politics have no practical purpose and are a complete outsider’s view. basically they don’t really matter. i tend to focus on american politics mostly because turkish politics are too depressing and canadian politics are too boring… if this post bothers you, just hit the big X on the top right corner of your browser window ;) peace.