School for scandal

This Economist article complains that the focus on Economic theory in B-Schools might be a cause for unethical behavior. But B-Schools cannot do much !!

Mr Ghoshal and his supporters are right that top business schools strive for academic respectability, and that this has led them to rely heavily on economic theory. But they are wrong to criticise this. As long as schools are teaching academic degrees (and, after all, the letters MBA stand for Master of Business Administration), they have to teach the most compelling business theories around. It may be a pity that these are mostly to be found in economics. But that is the fault of other disciplines for not coming up with ideas to rival, for example, agency theory or the maximisation of shareholder value.

In a similar way, a good MBA degree can help provide a student with analytical skills and theoretical knowledge useful to a business career. But becoming a successful leader of men and women in a turbulent business world requires maturity and wisdom. Happily, there is no degree programme for those.

Microsoft Anti-Spyware !!!

Microsoft's own anti-spyware is now available !!

Here is Joel's review.

I understand that Microsoft wants to help customers who feel like a spyware-free operating system should be your right when you pay for WinXP, but it's a shame that by giving it away free they're likely to wipe out a useful industry and replace it with something that's difficult to trust due to conflicts of interest.

Did they do it ?

on NYTimes

Dedicated to my sidey, Apeman Zuch !!

Neanderthals may have seen their first modern Homo sapiens some 100,000 years ago in what is now Israel. The two people almost certainly came in contact in Europe in the last centuries before the dwindling Neanderthal population was replaced forever by the intruding modern humans.

The question was, he continued, "Did Neanderthals and modern humans do it?"

Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a Neanderthal expert at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not at the meeting, contends that the 24,500-year-old skeleton of a young boy found in Portugal appeared to be a Neanderthal-Homo sapiens hybrid. The interpretation has so far been viewed with skepticism.

"It was not bad genes but bad luck for the Neanderthals," Dr. Stringer said. "Modern humans may have had no direct effect on Neanderthal extinction. They actually walked into empty spaces where Neanderthals had already disappeared."

Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History was not entirely joking when he suggested that few genes were exchanged because "no self-respecting Neanderthal female would fancy a Homo sapiens male."

Blinkx!!

A crazy search engine which makes shifting between search pages look like surfing TV channels !!

And Check out a feature called Visualizer. If you figure out what it is supposed to do, let me know ;-)

Booced ?

Booced is a term used for describing someone who gets fired for writing about his job on a blog !!

Google Blogger gone (on SearchBlog) - a recent Google employee who was booced.

Tech Trivia on washingtonpost.com has more such trivia.

F1 rules change for 2005

The change in Tyre rule is drastic and could totally change the equation.

Tyres must last for qualifying and the race. The reason being that harder, and therefore more durable, tyres will reduce cornering speeds.

This means that pit stops will look very different, with fewer mechanics involved as cars take on fuel without tyre changes, and will be less frequent.

Tyres can be replaced in the event of a puncture or damage caused by debris, but not at a refuelling stop.

Drivers would previously have changed tyres two or three times during a race, after around 70 to 100 km, in carefully orchestrated pitstops.

They must now last around 350km.

Engines

Engines must now last for two races, rather than just one, with any unscheduled change resulting in a 10-place penalty on the starting grid. That will put a premium on reliability.

Qualifying

Qualifying will be held over two days, with the final session on Sunday morning. The Sunday and Saturday times will be aggregated.

This will mean more action for the crowd at the circuit on Sunday but the starting grid and pole position will not be decided until shortly before the race.

The CD's end ?

on Washington Post

"The new format is no format," predicted Petersen, a 24-year industry veteran who also owns a record label, a recording studio and a music-publishing company. "What the consumer would buy is a data file, and you could create whatever you need. If you want to make an MP3, you make an MP3. If you want a DVD-Audio surround disc, you make that."

"We're moving beyond the media stage to the delivery stage," agreed Mitch Gallagher, 41-year-old editor of EQ, a San Mateo, Calif.-based magazine for music producers. At some point, he said, "you won't have something to hold in your hand" until you transfer a data file to a blank disc or tape.

"I think CDs are going to be around for a long time," said Petersen. "The cassette was a silly format. It was never designed to be a high-fidelity format. Plus like LPs, you had to flip the media over halfway through. Music buyers are still replacing all their favorite albums on CD."

"Remember," Miller said, "college kids and urban adults are buying their music online, but everybody else is buying their records at Best Buy and Wal-Mart."

However, there are other, contradictory statistics lurking out there:

During the second half of 2004, more than 91 million digital tracks -- songs downloaded from the Internet -- were sold, compared with 19.2 million in the same period in 2003. That's an increase of 376 percent.

More than 140 million digital tracks were purchased during 2004. Plus in the last week of 2004, digital track sales hit a record 6.7 million.

"What we've been seeing is just going to continue to develop," Simson said, adding that the popularity of downloadable music will force musicians, labels and watchdog groups such as SoundExchange to make sure all the right people are getting paid. "You're going to see record companies become much more focused on licensing. There are already subscription services now where you can listen to whatever you want when you want it."

Indeed, Napster's To Go subscription service allows buyers to essentially rent an unlimited amount of music for $15 per month.

"Everyone said the Internet is going to kill physical CD sales, but it's actually helping CD sales," Petersen said. "The Amazon experience is easier than going to a store. . . . Why aren't record stores using the Internet? If you keep things old-school, you are going to die."