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Read Findians Briefings - Forthright Fortnightly From Finland
Text of interesting news items that appeared in some later issues of
Volume 1 of Findians Briefings, your popular fortnightly webletter from Finland read in more tha 70 countries.
AST Collapse Imminent
MICROSOFT to withdraw their RACIST, SEXIST dictionary
Dateline: 8th February 1996
A group of top Finnish businessmen headed by Matti Vuoria, Chief Chancellor, are leaving in mid-February on a trip to India to promote trade.
What is significant is the trade statistics for 1994. This shows that Finland exported 700 million marks to India while they only bought goods valued at 250 million marks - the balance of trade heavily in favour of Finland - a developed country.
Considering that the cost of living in Finland is 7 times that of India, these figures have a much greater significance than is revealed at first glance. It means that Finland exported goods of actual value of 100 million marks at a prices of 700 million marks and bought goods of 1750 million marks at a price of 250 million marks.
Surely this was not meant to be the meaning behind the new world trade agreement. There should be an international agreement regarding valuation of goods for international trade as otherwise. this gross exploitation of developing countries by the developed will be the new world order.
We hope that this delegation will reverse this imbalance rather than aggravate it.
Dateline 7th February 1996
In our last issue, tucked away in a corner was a comment on the Estonia saga. Not many of you would have seen it - so we reproduce it below in the main issue.
The reason - well, this evening, the luxury liner and Finnish Sailing City, Silja Symphony, ran aground just outside Stockholm.
This made us recall our experience of 1975 - "Vikings Invade Järvisaari", and "Estonia Disaster", the sinking of the Estonia in 1994 with the loss of almost 900 lives, and.....
by Annikki
Enough has been published about the Estonia disaster that occurred in Finnish waters a few weeks ago. I just watched the controversial moving service held to commemorate those who died. The technical investigation pointed clearly to the reason for this incident - the unsafe front loading system on these ferries. I do not want to write more about that.
My comment is that I am surprised that such an accident has not happened earlier as Finnish companies have disregarded passenger safety for several years, all in the interest of profit. Do I speak from third or first person experience?
My opinion is from first person experience. I wrote an article with Jacob "Vikings Invade Järvisaari" based on our true life experience in the summer of 1975 on a trip between Naantali in Finland and Kapelskar in Sweden. The Finnish sea captain of the Viking Line boat, in the bright summer evening light, forgot to do a left turn. He drove his ship up an island. He risked the lives of his passengers and crew by having his tottering boat pulled off the island with all of us on board. He then took his damaged ship, with all the passengers still on board, on to the Swedish destination. Every action was a gross violation of safety. Everything was geared to ensuring no loss to the ship-owners and the company.
I was shocked at the callous behaviour which risked the lives of our children and us. There was not even a word of apology from the company for having caused us great inconvenience, let alone put us through this traumatic experience.
As the weather was good we survived. There had been no safety drill on the boat, the announcements when the accident happened were just incomprehensible, the panic we witnessed as we rushed to our cabin to rescue our sleeping children, is indescribable. The trauma and nightmares still pursue us - but what happened to that sea captain - not a word was heard of that incident as the company hushed up the story in the global interests of Finland.
Am I surprised that a disaster as the Estonia has not happened earlier? Yes. Now there has been a first time, I believe, knowing the insensitive behaviour of many business magnets here, this is certainly not going to be the last. It will be another technical defect that the experts say just cannot happen!
I do not trust these experts.
I was unhappy with the tone adopted by this multinational. I sent email to them (copy Guy) that they could not start to develop something that had already been developed. I pointed out that Michael Shapiro (mws@cs.brown.edu) had put out the Mac version as a shareware product in June 1993. It was a great little application.
3M had come down on him like a ton of bricks as he had used the term Post-it(R) in the name of his product. Trade mark infringement, they called it. Poor Michael was forced to withdraw his product. Now 3M wants us to believe that they have to develop something that had already been developed for the Mac years ago. What a sham and a shame! I wonder who will clobber 3M on behalf of Michael if they falsely claim they have developed this for the Mac.
I also pointed out that we have excellent products on the Mac OS which obviated the need for an obsolete Post-it(R) type application. I referred to great desktop applications, ScrapIt Pro (1992 by John V. Holder - johnholder@aol.com, shareware cost $20) and Flashwrite II (1992 by Andrew Welch - shareware cost $15), being just two of the numerous desk top accessories that are far superior to anything that 3M can come out with for the Mac OS.
Let 3M tell what it wants to Bill Gates enthusiasts, but they will hardly be likely to manipulate Mac users in a similar way.
I was especially thrilled that Guy acknowledged, with thanks, my post and told me to "RAGE ON".
P.S. I have not received a reply from 3M. Maybe they placed my mail in their now "developed" Post-it(R) and it got lost with the other rubbish!! :-)
(R) Just for the record and to save my skin - Post-it(R) is the Registered Trade Mark of 3M Corporation, and they can keep it.
Paul Charles of BBC World Service interviewed Dr. Jim Clark, CEO of Netscape, in the programme "World Business Brief". Asked whether Jim was worried that the 70% Web Browser market share of Netscape was being eroded by Microsoft, Jim countered that Netscape held 85% market share and the attempt by Bill Gates with his money power to convince the world that Microsoft (with just a 7% market share - Should not Microsoft be worried about single digit market share?) had invented the Internet was not going to drive Netscape out of business.
Jim said that the Microsoft attitude, with no cost-of-goods, was anti-competitive. He mentioned that Bill Gates has made it a personal endeavour to drive Netscape out of business but he was not going to succeed. Netscape was the leader and Bill, as ever, would always only be behind them.
There was specific criticism of Apple in this interview. Jim said that Apple being way ahead of anyone in operating systems, just as Netscape is ahead in the browser field, for several years had done nothing except take in high profit margins, which had eroded their lead.
Jim said this was not going to be the case with Netscape, where strategic alliances were being made. Netscape had several ideas which would keep them as market leaders despite all attempts by Microsoft to kill the company. In fact, it was not surprising when Jim mentioned that he welcomed honest genuine competition which spurred his group to develop their product even more vigourously. He certainly did not seem to be worried about copycats - as that is what Microsoft will always remain!
It is interesting to recall an item from News Chat by C. M. Jyothi which appeared in the December 1995 annual issue of THE WEEK, one of the best loved English weeklies in India. It was entitled: "What Bill Gates Would Rather Not Say - MY MICROSOFT UNDERBELLY". THE WEEK is a Malayala Manorama publication and part of the same family as Findians Briefings - but there is no editorial connection between the two.
The Union of Book Readers, Northern Finland Section, organised an event at the Oulu Central Library for small publishers to display their works. We had a small display which attracted a lot of attention.
There has recently been a local ad war between the two leading national supermarket chains about the economy of shopping in them. One of them, Prisma, released a full page ad with prices claimed to be the best in Oulu. Citymarket, the biggest of the four national chains, responded quickly with a comparative price chart which showed that it was 4% cheaper.
We were not to be left behind. Using our Survival System explained in our book "Handbook for Survival in Finland" we did a quick analysis of our normal shopping habits and we were able to show anyone following our method would have saved over 22%.
There was keen interest in the book exposing the wrong doings at the University of Oulu contained in "Seven Years Hard Labour in a Finnish Holiday Camp - A Finnish University". Visitors who read the newspaper reports that we had framed quietly muttered that the facts had been exposed but before the system was corrected it would take years. This was the conclusion reached in the book as the powers at the top scramble to protect their friends with the scratch my back principle.
There was also considerable interest in the three books by Mrs. K. M. Mathew on display at the exhibition, "Kerala Cookery", "Modern Kerala Dishes" and "The Family Cookbook" as well as the book by Annikki, "...for the hour of his judgement is come;...", about her trials and tribulations as a foreigner in India and the problems with the bureaucracy and Indian legal system.
Compared to the Tornio exhibition (Tornio being a town on the Swedish border about 150 km north of Oulu) in which we had also taken part in December 1994, the Oulu exhibition had little to commend it. It was not given the publicity that it deserved. In Tornio, the local librarian took a great deal of pains to organise the show and ensure that the press and public got enough information to tempt them to come and meet the local authors and publishers. They even invested in almost all the books by these locals. At Oulu none of the Library Staff came forward to encourage the small publishers and local authors. The local newspaper, Kaleva, itself a large publisher belonging to the Finnish cartel, gave the exhibition little publicity and an even smaller write up - after all who wants to cut his own throat!
Microsoft and Apple have been in discussions to bury the hatchet. Is this a wise decision for Apple, whatever Evangelist Guy may say?
Considering Bill Gates present avowed policy to destroy Netscape, is Gil Amelio, CEO of Apple, being a little too naive with his overtures. In short, Microsoft is not to be trusted in matters of cooperation. In the past Microsoft has always taken the cream in any partnership, leaving the sour milk to its partner.
In my email to Gil just before his mid-April meeting with Apple staff I gave him my view of which direction he should take if he was to bring Apple out of its temporary problem.
Restructing does not mean meek submission. In this bitter war, the importance is to realise
If the camaraderie with Microsoft continues, I can only forsee a bitter pill for Apple. The Apple stock which on Friday 3.5.96 stood at $23.75 ($24.75 US on 29.4.96 at 7:39 US PST) will continue to drop, and one never knows who will be the next owner of Apple.
Get wise Gil - time is running out! This is not the same case as your previous experiences.
Here is a company Annual Report with a difference. Infosys Technologies, one of the best known indian software companies has valued the Human Resources of the organisation higher than the tangible assests. The human resources have been quantified at $56 million, more than double the value of all assets in the balance sheet, which is $26 million. The value of the human resource of the company is double the 1995-96 total earnings of $28 million. The report of the Directors recognizes the significance of the human resources of the company: It says:
In a recent poll carried out by the Oulu based Kaleva newspaper, the popularity of Finnish President Matti Ahtisaari, who spends most of his time, and that of his wife (and a harem of time-servers), criss-crossing the world at Finnish taxpayers expense, has dropped sharply.
Finns are coming to realise that their President has itchy feet. The poll revealed that the majority thought that he travelled to much but they thought his travels were useful - the question is useful for whom? They have not yet determined what he is itching for (President ambitions - see Visit to China).
His travelling is especially irritating when the Government is busy cutting the small handouts to the weakest sections of Finnish society while simultaneously training its police and internal security forces to act against those that may be inclined to take direct action. This display of force has been flashed across the Finnish TV screens as a warning to any militantly-minded Finns.
This is hardly likely, anyway, as the Finnish education system has ensured a docile population who have been firmly house-trained to believe that authority is always right.
Also, politicians know that once in power they have to stay there at all costs. Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen used this effectively when he threatened this week to resign if his steps to annihilate the weakest of Finnish society were not supported. This brought the unprincipled politicians in partnership with the Prime Minister quickly in-line! Opposition parties had no leg to stand on as this had been their policy when they were in Government, anyway.
Finnish Trade Unions intend to show some force but will quickly step back as they are least concerned about the unemployed and pensioners whom they do not represent in any case. So the weak in Finnish society continue to have no voice as they are mercilessly raped by the Government, its bureaucrats and the industrial cartels which provide the Government the necessary support base.
How many of this highly paid group will tolerate even a meagre reduction in their travel allowances and daily bata, the mode and class of travel they are allowed to use or the class of hotels they are permitted to stay at Government expense - not one penny!!
Finnish multinational Nokia along with American giant Motorola will design, supply and build the network for three cellular circles in India - for the states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. The contract value is estimated to be around $80 million. Further details are awaited.
New York based correspondent O. P. Malik wrote a few weeks ago about the rapidly sinking ship - AST Research Inc., one of the American Fortune 500 companies. The company is rapidly losing market share and losing money like a colander filled with water. From a 52 week high of $19.1250, the present stock value is Bid on NASDAQ at just $6.5 (3rd May 1996) with the Day Low at just $6.1250. Over a 300% slide downhill.
The CEO, Pakistani-born Safi Quereshy, having to accept the guarantees of Samsung to increase his credit line from $100 million to $200 million, seems to take comfort in the fact that he believes that 1.5 million users of AST computers see the AST logo everyday. He does not realise that the many of them, like me, are cursing the day we first saw that AST logo.
He is oblivious of the very bad image that exists of AST in the Internet. Last year, when a major discussion about this company was in progress in the newsgroup comp.sys.laptops and about half a dozen other major newsgroups, there was not one single satisfied AST computer user to come forward to defend the oft repeated poor customer service record. (You can read some of the interesting correspondence in this series in the special page created for this purpose. See the David vs Goliath Saga.)
Finally, in November 1995, AST Research Inc. decided to show a web presence. As I wrote in an earlier issue, the attempt was pathetic. Can you believe that a company supposedly expert in computers could not create even a simple mailto link to the webmaster? What customer service can you expect from such a company?
I posted copies of the results of my efforts to Safi via his webmaster as well as the AST customer support section. Since then the company has been making every effort to make their web presence work and not be the laughing stock of World Wide Web.
Their immaturity is obvious if one decides to web-surf through their site using Netscape 2.0. Suddenly you will encounter a completely black page, except for the prominent Legal Gavel at the bottom of the page.
Safi has one great obsession - Legal Notice and Disclaimers on almost every page - as his company clearly has a single policy above all to its customers - it is not responsible for anything!!
My first reaction was to think that the Black Page was that Safi was already in mourning with the predicted demise being talked about in most informed circles. Later, I thought that maybe he is now in purdah.
Safi is obviously hoping that Korean Giant Samsung, which has already lost around $500 million in trying to bail him out, will pay him a handsome sum for his AST Research Inc. brand name. If Samsung does a bit of homework I think they will stay well away from the brand image that Safi has managed to create during the last 18 months. I would not pay him tuppence for it.
In our April 22nd issue No. 7 of Findians Briefings we had written:
We had also written, if Tuulikki will look back a little further to our paper edition of Findians Briefings which we were sending her when she was a politician, that the most dangerous combination that one can have in a President is a bureaucrat who is elected to the the post. He knows exactly how to subvert the political system.
President Ahtisaari has been doing just that ever since he came to his post. The politicians are in disarray. They do not not know how to counter his moves. Finland is on the threshhold of loss of its democratic Parliamentarian system - and the Finns cannot see it happening before their own eyes and the politicians are at a loss on how to stop him.
We hope Tuulikki is getting some teeth, even if they are borrowed ones, and we hope she will bite even harder than before!
And where will this money come from, Mr. Vuoria
I think Mr. Vuoria will not be giving this money to any small Finnish companies but only to his friends in big business who already have ways and means to avoid paying their taxes and to milk the taxpayers and consumers of their money in other forms of subsidies. If so how does he encourage small industries to become high tech? Certainly my small company is not going to be entitled to a single penny of this money - or will it Mr. Vuoria? I think this proposal of Mr. Vuoria would be called corruption in some countries.
No Mr. Vuoria, we think you are barking up the wrong tree and have caught hold of the wrong end of the stick. Large Finnish industries should be levied an automation social tax so that they use automation not to reduce labour but to increase the level of technology with increase the use of the most valuable resource in Finland - its unemployed. If Mr. Vuoria really wants to be effective I suggest he takes a look at the bureaucracy and its expenditure. Take for instance the expenditure on administering the aid given by Finland to developing countries. More than 10% of the money is spent in administration costs on the bureaucracy. I am sure I can automate that entire system so that we can get rid of 98% of that expenditure on bureacrats and give 99% of the money as aid. Is Mr. Vuoria prepared to finance such reaercah which cuts the throats of his colleagues? I do not think so.
Figures relating to the Admistration costs on Finnish aid are shown in the table below:
Mr. Vajpayee is a extremely competent politician. He has never been in any hurry to stake his claim for Prime Ministership. He could have done this almost two decades ago. I was in India at that time when he was being pressed to accept the post by his party at the end seventies, but he had bluntly refused as his agenda was on a totally different time-scale.
At this instant, however, he was insistent that he should be the Prime Minister. What is his hidden agenda when he knows that his Ministry is going to be short-lived? Maybe just 15 days!
Prime Minister Vajpayee is a shrewd and clever man. He wanted in these few few days as Prime Minister to show the nation the clear direction he would adopt if the BJP, the Hindu fundamentalist party, was elected to power with a solid mandate. While BBC and others speculate that he is trying to woo over members to support the BJP, they could not be further from the truth. Once he has shown his direction he wants to hand over the reins to a government of disparate elements. He knows they will not last very long. He knows he will be able to go to the elecetorate with a strong hand, having told the nation his policy in these days. He knows he will win the next election effortlessly.
Is it bad or good for India if the BJP wins the next election? As long as Mr. Vajpayee is the Prime Minister, the situation will be stable. However, Mr. Vajpayee is already 72, he has several hardliners standing close by him in the wings, and the secular nature of India would be totally dismantled once the Vajpayee doves in the BJP are eliminated. And that will not take long.
What strength does the BJP have? If one knows the inner workings of the BJP as well as I do, it is a party which has worked systematically to the day of total power. It realised its follies at the time of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi. At that time the party implemented a master strategy which is now slowly coming to fruition. It is a very dangerous policy in the sense it is diabolical. What is this strategy? Findians Briefings readers will soon read the background to this in coming issues. I was in the position at one time, as an industrial consultant, to be dragged into it. It took me a while to extricate myself from that web. Hence, I say, be warned as the BJP has not been and is in no hurry. With a popular mandate - it will lead to the death of a secular India.
However the real news that made the market move sharply upwards was the joint announcement by Apple, IBM and Motrola that the 200 MHz microporcessor based computer would be on the shelves before the end of this year leaving Microsoft and Intel way, way behind. Mac supporters are enthusiastic as it takes them so far ahead of the Microsoft Operating system that however much Bill gates tries to catch up, he just cannot make it. As Bill Gates is committing the bulk of his funds to destroy Netscape, he is trying to woo Apple.
Bill Gates is now in trouble as he cannot find the companies to buy which will help him catch up on Apple and Netscape. With the marriage of working relationship between IBM and Apple, he is now in dissarray.
Maybe we should be writing the obituary of Microsoft as their stock decends (while those of some other Windows/DOS based computer manufacturers as AST Research Inc has hit the bottom).
In the meantime, there was an excellent and well thought out article in the Seattle Times written by Diedtra Henderson " Stand by your Macs, Apple devotees agree". Lack of space does not permit me to quote from this article but it expressed very clearly why I will not move away from my MacOS.
Considering it was developed as FREEWARE by a Finn who was fed up with the DOS/Windows set-up, he is a soul-mate of many a Mac addict. I hope that the developments of the Linux/Mac OS will continue as it would be in line with showing Bill Gates where to get off.
In the meanwhile Bill Gates has been busy trying to convince small business owners that the best operating system they can have is his Windows 95. If any of them have my experience with DOS/Windows 3.1 (David vs Goliath) they will be bankrupt in no time. Small business owners - my advice to you is to move to the Mac as that platform will help you get your work done rather than have you struggle with your computer. Failing this move to the friendly Linux (free) platform and do not let any shark extract your hard earned money from you.
The feature Malayalam film by Adoor Gopalakrishnan in which Kathapurushan portrays the growth of an individual born on the eve of independence of India has won the 1995 Indian National Award for the Best Feature Film. Unlike the products of Bollywood, which have a lot of song and dance, Malayalam films have more depth and content.
One fondly remembers two Malayalam films which in days gone by won great acclaim. The first was in 1965 when "Chemmeen" by Ramu Kariat received the PresidentÍs Gold Medal. The other was 24 years ago and called "Swayamvaram" by none other than Adoor himself.
Well done Adoor.
TI indicated their ability to commercially produce 0.18 micron width lines on semiconductor chips. 125 million transistors can now be housed on a single chip. This is more than double that presently housed in the same area using the 0.25 micron technology.
It is no secret that 0.12 micron technology is not far away. Soon, however, we will be reaching the limits of laws of physics as it is known today.
More information from the TI press release "TI's 0.18 Micron Process Technology Packs 125 Million"
The release of this information was followed by a tinge of sadness as their young CEO Jerry R. Junkins (58) passed away in Germany while meeting his employees and customers to tell them of this significant breakthrough by TI. Obituary at Texas Instruments Announces Death of Jerry R. Junkins
This development at TI should help Apple and its Macintosh and Newton range of desktop, laptop and handheld computers. Apple, which is already way ahead of its competition in such fields as multimedia and voice recognition, can now bring tremendous power to their regular models at a significantly lower cost. Opportunity is staring in the face of Apple today. I hope it will be grasped with both hands as a tribute to Jerry.
Vajpayee achieved his objective. He put the BJP on course to becoming the next elected Government after the present coalition falls or limps through its time.
The BJP has never been in a hurry to secure power. In this instance the party wanted to take hold of the Government for a couple of important reasons.
To understand this it is important to know what happens when a Minister takes office in India. Every Minister has two Personal Secretaries - the first is the beureaucrat from the Indian Administrative Service who comes with the job. The second is the party worker who joins the Minister to organise his work in keeping with party norms. It is this second Personal Secretary that one has to watch if one wants to know what is going on in a Ministry - not the Minister or the bureaucrat.
With BJP Leader L. K. Advani under threat with the hawala corruption scandal, it was imperative for the party to quickly access every Government Department to get hold of any incriminating documents and immobilise, corrupt or destroy them, if necessary. They also had to gather documents about their opponents which could be used to hold them to ransom.
The BJP mechanism is superbly efficient in organising this sort of operation. The United Front saw what was happening and made a frantic bid to expose this. They watched helplessly as the BJP gathered the documents. Everyone has skeletons in the cupboard. The BJP has expertly got hold of all that was possible in these crucial two weeks.
They had done it with precision about 19 years ago when several of their members occupied Ministerial posts when Indira Gandhi was removed from power in March 1977.
During the time of the Indian Emergency, while the opposition leaders were languishing in prison, BJP party workers infiltrated all the Indian news agencies and controlled them to such an extent that they knew exactly what Indira was up to before she knew it herself. It was they that fed her with information that made her go to the polls in 1977 when all around had virtually decided that she had established herself as a dictator. Indira had been fed with vital information that it was essential for her to go to the nation or face assassination - which she succeeded in delaying by a few years!
The BJP also realised at the time of the Emergency that they did not have financial muscle to combat Indira. The minute they came to power in March 1977, albeit as a coalition, they formed a core group of sympathetic businessmen. These were given the responsibility of setting up an industrial base for the party so that they would never be short of finances.
I was involved, unwittingly, in setting up one of these companies. My contact with the businessman concerned brought me very close with the BJP tactics.
Greed overtook some of those involved. Some of their industrial bases collapsed as they did not have solid industrial experience. A hard core of industries, owned and managed by BJP businessmen, was however established. These have been available to provide the necessary funds to support their tactics.
That is why it is difficult to believe that BJP leader L. K. Advani would have resorted to taking money as part of the hawala corruption scandal. There was no need from him to have done so. The BJP has other sources and these are safe and solid. The money in these industries belongs to the party. The businessmen concerned are only trustees for the party funds scattered all over India. Much of the original investment funds were contributed by party supporters around the world. They have substantial funds scattered around the world.
There has been no political party anywhere in the world which has set up its organisation in such a systematic way. They know that finally a billion people will be under their control the day they come to power with an absolute majority. That day is relentlessly drawing closer and closer. One hopes that the party will generate more Vajpayees and not more hard-core fundamentalists who will stop at nothing to destroy their opposition. One can only pray for this.
And what about the new Prime Minister Deva Gowda - wait for our unique analysis of this man. You will see his tactics from a different perspective that can be had only from Findians Briefings.
Swedish multinational Ericsson has signed a major new contract with Indian cellular network operator, Birla Communications Ltd. to provide a complete GSM network from Ericsson. Birla Communications is a joint venture between global operator AT&T Wireless Services and the Indian company of the A.V. Birla Group. The network covers two of most attractive telecom circles, Maharashtra and Gujarat. The order is estimated to be US $77 million in value. MAJOR NEW GSM CONTRACT FOR ERICSSON IN INDIA
This is a turnkey project for Ericsson who will supply both infrastructure equipment and carry out installations. Birla Communications' services will commence in the autumn of 1996. The Chief Executive of Birla Communications is Raj Matthews. Tommy Eriksson is the Executive Director of Ericsson Telephone Corp. India AB.
Ericsson is the leading supplier of cellular technology to India and a fierce competitor of Finnish multinational NOKIA. There are three Ericsson GSM networks in operation in India. Ericsson has installed GSM networks in 43 countries.
Considering a parallel news release this week that Ericsson, along with Telia Mobitel and Telia Research, hass demonstrated a major breakrthrough in GSM commubnication with transmission at 64 kbps ( WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS AT 64 kbps WITH GSM), I hope that Ericsson is not going to sell obsolete technology to India but the best in its range.
Wake up, Wake up NOKIA - India is calling - loudly!
The unemployment figures in Finland are stage-managed. The statistics say that there are only 450000 unemployed (total population 5 million) and that it is reducing. The Government has paid various organisations to take on the long term unemployed. I had a meeting with a senior engineer at a Finnish University. In his small lab of 5 people he had 2 workers which were paid for entirely from Government funds. The real level of unemployed is, therefore, by my reckoning around 750000.
A TV study which looked at the implications of the decision for Finland to join the European Regulatory Mechanism (ERM) as a prelude to joining the European Monetary union (EMU) pointed in only one direction. The experts from Brussels, Frankfurt and London said one thing in common - the level of unemployment would increase substantially if Finland joined.
Hence political strategy is being implemented at the cost of the people and their jobs. This is the case of open-care patient Moses (what Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen deludes himself to think he is?) being hopelessly lost in the wilderness - and he does not have any socialistic God to help him on his way. He has only the far left and right and green-faced power hungry politicians carrying him aloft. Hence, he is scaning around, with his bedfellows, for an oasis and getting lost further into the sand-dune abyss. I hope he finds an exorcist to drive out these demons that are tormenting his countrymen.
Meanwhile globe-trotter President Matti Ahtisaari is throwing all the fistfuls of money he can lay his hands on into all the baskets in every direction to hopefully reach his target, least concerned with what is happening to Finland. On Tuesday 18th June he will host another "small party," this time to celebrate the 60th birthday of his wife, Eeva.
Happy Birthday First Lady and spare a thought for those millions poor of Finland when you blow out their candles and please do not choke on that cloudberry cream cake!
Hence, the statement by Indian Prime Minister Deva Gowda, when he said that he was not an economist or scientist but a man with the well-being of 900 million people in his thoughts, was comforting. Then, his emphasis should be on the support to be given to small industries in rural areas to generate employment and to introduce earning capacity in the rural millions. If he can execute this approach he would be far ahead of his counterpart in Finland where only to the big is beautiful concept is considered correct.
(I will, hopefully, soon be putting up a paper which I wrote about 20 years ago along with a leading Indian property developer which points the way. It is called Rural Urbanisation.)
I hope that PM Deva Gowda is not paying lip service and really takes to heart the enormous task on hand. Several previous Governments have said that this was their objective. All they did was divert the money allocated into the pockets of their friends and relatives - the rural poor never benefitted.
Personal experience in this area has been bitter. When I managed a company in a rural area in India, to get through a telephone call to a supplier or to a customer could take a week, if I was lucky. To cash a customers check to get the much needed cash flow could take about a month.
Lip service will not do PM Gowda. Experience in the problems of running small industries in rural areas is a must - being an ivory tower bound economist, scientist or politician is certainly not going to be much use in this instance.
Time servers continue to sing praises, but the bigger they are the harder they will fall. The bouquets will soon turn to brickbats.
Microsoft (5% market share) is putting its money to kill browser king Netscape (85% market share), something which will not happen as easily as Bill imagines. He will have to spend a wee bit more as he gets the second kill target in his sights as a Oracles concept of the network computer would obviate the need for Microsoft software or its operating system. With 0 market share, Bill does not agree - and will now probably to try to buy over Oracle!
Meanwhile the Mac OS with Open Doc, Open Transport along with CyberDog and Apple Speech Recognition software, in conjunction with Java are making life a bit of hell for Microsoft.
Bill is thrashing around to try and convince the world that it is he that has discovered all. His Word has become so bloated that it is not a Word Processor but needs a separate Processor to run. Many, like me, are thanking our lucky stars that we did not get hooked on that drug.
So as Oracle, Sun, HP and Apple in conjunction with IBM, consolidate their positions, Microsoft is fast losing its friends as they discover that their web entry revealed that they were offering just junk. Soon Intel will have no option to change its strategy . That will be the end in sight for Bill Gates and Microsoft. Sell your stock now if you want to make a profit. Tomorrow may be too late.
Pete Higgins, Microsoft Vice President in charge of applications and content is quoted by Financial Times of London as saying "We have discovered that a lot of our information was pretty bad. We have discovered, because we finally gave people access, that a lot of it was wrong."
Nothing new in this - something Mac users have known about Microsoft products for years!
PS Microsoft has chosen Banaglore, India as its site for further development. Bill waited to see where Apple would make its committment in India. Once he got to know the choice was Bangalore, in order to ensure that his moles are effective, with much pomp, Microsoft chose the same location. Microsoft, please do something original for a change.
PPS Satjiv Singh Chahil is Senior VP of Worldwide Communication of Apple Computer Inc. This 40-year old sardar from Punjab University in North India is in charge of advertising, public relations and worldwide marketing. His Mission Impossible advertising campaign for Apple is the aggressive hit-back which has been long overdue. With Markkula (a good Finn and present Vice Chairman) and Satjiv at Apple - Findians cannot be wrong in staying with this Findians company!! Thanks for the great ad Satjiv and do keep that Findians Apple Flag flying high.
The Finnish Olympic Selection Committee did not consider the qualifications of a young 20 km distance walker who had been trained by the present World Champion, Finn Valentin Kosonen, despite the fact that the young athlete had qualified in the trials. The Committee Members had plenty of room for themselves on the trip to Atlanta but not for this qualifier.
This prompted Valentin, the only serious Gold Medal hope for Finland to tell the Committee that if his protoge was not included, then neither was he going on the trip.
Valentin used the traditional Finnish tactic of "Hard Against Hard".
After some protestation, the Committee gave in to Valentin.
In Finland it is not a question of who meets the criteria but what connections one has - and Valentin used his standiing in this instance to his advantage. One hopes he does well at Atlanta as there are many bigwigs who were publicly humbled by him waiting to skin him alive if he fails. It is sad that merit is of least concern in Finland - only whom you know! And the sad part is that these bigwigs can openly tell lies to cover themselves in such situations - and think nothing about it. What hypocrites.
Even though the Indians were whipped soundly, it was delightful to listen to Sachin Tendulkar's glorious performance in the second innings, and especially to hear, even the usually most sarcastic Fred Truman, enthusing over the performance.
(Probably you now understand why I (a man-eating, savage!) run a Microsoft-free computer!!)
Revelations of the scandulous sexist/racist nature of their product had Microsoft scrambling to reclaim copies. Such situations occur when Microsoft has no one to copy and are thrown in at the deep end.
In another news item, the true situation of who-leads-who in the computing world was explicitly revealed. A search by one enterprising individual about when the two companies, Apple and Microsoft, received their Internet domain addresses showed that Apple already had its domain address way back in 1987 while it was only in 1991 that Microsoft managed to get a domain address.
Bill Gates, confronted with such info, will probably pull another leg. Maybe he will tell us how it was he who advised Apple to get their Internet access (so that he could see how they solved the problems). Pity he has such a poor copying team.
PS. I hope you will register your complaint, as Indians are not only Mexicans, to whom Microsoft has decided to apologise.
Once established that the Finnish people knew that Moses was ill and unable to attend this important get-together, it was promptly reported that he was well again, miraculously cured (by the hand of God), and out of hospital.
The real problem seems to be that Moses does not seem to have much power. He has a Foreign Minister and a Minister for European Affairs in his Cabinet - but it is President Ahtisaari, with his wanderlust, that turns up at the meetings where Moses and his colleagues are supposed to be.
Hei, Mr. President, would we not save a few billion of borrowing by the Finnish Government if we got rid of the post of Minister for Europe and the Foreign Minister, along with their huge entourage of your bureaucrat buddies? I am sure no-one in Finland will mind if we add a few thousand bureaucrats to the 750000 unemployed?
Having showed in the few days at the helm of India that it was a "tolerant and responsible" national party, the BJP is asking its cadre, which are a hard core and dedicated set of fundamentalists, to carry the message of tolerance to all corners of India to ensure victory in the next general election.
BJP leaders have sensed that there is some dissatisfaction about their attitudes in the country. It is very likely that they will soon bring in a corps of dummy Muslims and Christians to bolster their image as a secular national party. Do not be surprised when you hear of some power-hungry non-Hindu politicians now making moves to join the BJP at the top level.
Making a presentation on ways to boost economic ties between India and Finland, Mr. Bassin said the Finnish Government was formulating a comprehensive strategy for greater Finnish investment in India. As a first step, high-level trade delegations were expected to visit India to explore the scope for increasing two-way trade, which at $ 200 million was strongly in favour of Finland. A major snag, he felt, was a lack of mutual information on trade prospects.
I would, however, warn Indians intending to cooperate with Finns that the Finnish model would lead to indiscriminate unemployment. The Finns automate purely for the sake of replacing labour because of the high social taxes prevelant in this country to support an incomptent and inefficient bureaucratic set-up. Any Finnish project should be carefully vetted to ensure that this absolutely ridiculous craze to replace manpower is not followed.
With a population of nearly a billion, India has to generate employment, not like the Finns who have an unemployment level of 750000 in a total working populaton strength of just over 2 million.
Proceed with care is what Findians would advise likely Indian cooperators. There is certainly not much to learn from the Finns by way of employment generation - the platform of the present Indian Government!
Participants at PC Expo got the first look at a PowerPC-based workstation capable of running both Mac OS and Windows NT. The machine has been built by IBM. It is code-named Mocassin.
Representatives of Apple and IBM are booting between the two operating systems, running standard applications on each. The machine has 64MB of RAM and a 66MHz bus. It can run with as little as 32 MB of RAM. It uses a PowerPC 604 processor running at 133 MHz. It will ship by the end of 1996. The system is aimed at corporate IS managers in dual platform environments. Once running the trouble-free Mac OS, these IS managers are likely to quietly shift away from the last Microsoft flag-ship product Windows NT when they see they can achieve higher efficiency and productivity with the Mac OS.
Large crowds at the PowerPC pavilion, which is co-sponsored by Apple, IBM, and Motorola, who have cooperated to run the PowerPC processor, is giving Bill Gates something to think about. Does Bill have the financial muscle to take on these three multinationals, plus Netscape (browser giant) and Oracle (net computing originator), simultaneously - and yet withstand the boycott of people who recognise that Microsoft is a company incapable of delivering bug-free software?
Watch for the downslide of the Microsoft stock. You will see that Bill will not be able to stand up straight for very long, even though his recent move (26th June) to capture the minds of the young (and the purses of their parents) with his tie-up with Nintendo is a desparate effort for the survival of his collapsing empire. I think not a single parent who sees Nintendo go down with Microsoft will shed a tear for this Japanese company which has wreaked havoc on the minds of our youngsters with its horrific video games.
Bob Willis, who decided the Player of the Match Award, did not think it fit to award it to this 23 year Indian lad who had also shown a very handy spell with the ball. In his analysis he mentioned youngster Dravid also for his sterling performance of scoring 95. The award went to the English wicketkeeper who held up the Indians in both innings and also kept wicket all through the gruelling long Indian innings.
The highlight of this test, beside the innings of Ganguly, was the retirement of Dicky Bird. I heard an interview on BBC in which he described how he turned up in London for his first umpiring assignment in 1969. He was to umpire a game at the Surrey Oval. The game was to start at 11 am. Dicky reached London the previous evening and found a hotel at Swiss Cottage, in North London, about a half-hour from the Oval. He was up at 4.30 am. After a cup of tea, Dicky Bird landed at the gates of the Oval cricket ground at 6 am to find them shut (obviously). He threw his bag over the gates and started to climb over them. When he reached the top, a London Bobby on his beat said "Hello, Hello, what have we here?".
Dicky tried to explain that his ball had gone over the gates!! Well, Dicky had to come down to face the bobby. When he explained his plight, he and the copper had a chinwag for an hour or so till the gates opened, as the blue-topper was also a cricket fan.
For further details please contact:
Findians Briefings, Oulu, Finland
to the Findians web complex
Hope you had a pleasant stay.