From the dumb moves that weren't department: Last year, everybody was laughing about Andersen Consulting – ”one of the great branded names of the 20th century,” accordint to yourdictionary.com–changing its name to Accenture. As Andersen goes down in flames over Enron and other missteps, who's laughing now?
Monthly Archives: March 2002
Morning coffee feeder check
The traffic lightened up a little at the feeder today. Aside from a flight of about 15 pigeons, it was just the usual swarm of sparrows and mourning doves.
Everybody needs a familiar
Whenever we see a crow picking at a carcass on the side of the road, my wife Paula says, “Look, Sean! One of your friends!”
Crows (and the other members of genus Corvus) hold a special place with me, all right. I'm also fond of their relatives, the jays, but there's just something about a raven or a common crow that connects with me.
This has been especially true since I read Bernd Heinrich's book,Mind of the Raven. But I've always appreciated the big black birds that hang around Baltimore in such large numbers, long before somebody decided to name the pro football team after Edgar Allen Poe's particular corvid acquaintance.
Jon Udell: Oar Pullers and Sail Inventors. “What if one of those guys pulling on the oars figures out how to make a sail?” 
[Scripting News]
Analyze this!
Dave Winer recently made some comments about “assembly line journalism” and “quote mill” analysts. Amy Wohl threw some more wood on the fire. I'm going to toss on some gasoline.
Tech reporters typically use analyst quotes for one or more of the following reasons:
(1)The reporter is looking for someone who can concisely define what's going on with a technology, and give an authoratative opinion to add meat to the story.
(2) They are just learning about the subject, and go to analysts to get a handle on it. They use quotes from analysts to lend authority to the resulting article.
(3) They want to create conflict within an article, and need to have somebody start a fight for them. So they go to an analyst.
(4) No one else is willing to be quoted for the story, and the reporter is on deadline with a hole to fill.
When I see a story based mostly on quotes from one or two analysts, I know that it's another case of #3 or #4. And it's situations like 3 and 4 that lead to the “bad reasons” Amy Wohl gives for an analyst call.
Now, as for the “quote machines”…
There are some analysts I will never quote, and some I will quote only with other sources for compare/contrast. These are the kinds of people who would still have a “buy” rating on Enron if it were possible.
Some analysts charge vendors to analyze them, or to be included in their matrix. Some analysts limit their research to customers handed to them on a silver platter by vendors. Some analysts are the equivalent of the Eliza program they used to run on the PDP-11 my high school had access to, parsing questions and rearranging them into answers.
Analysts at some firms have gotten bonuses based on the number of times they were quoted in the press. It's free publicity for their firm, and leads directly to sales of reports. And analysts at some firms are responsible for selling their reports, too.
So the next time you read a story with an analyst quote, think about the analyst's motives. And think about the reporter's motives, too. Usually, both are transparent.
Allfirst: Out of Control
If Allfirst had installed the right software–and cared about the data they already had on trades–John Rusnak probably would have done less damage, or would have been caught sooner. But they didn't, and he lost $690 million trying to cover for a chain of bad trades on the Yen.
BOF Session in my backyard
Last year, I put up a bird feeder in my backyard. Being in the “greatest city in America”, I didn't expect much; sparrows, house finches, and flying rats, mostly. And that's what I got. Until this last fall, when the goldfinches started showing up around the sunflowers we had planted.
However, that didn't prepare me for the crowd in my backyard this last week. It was a black bird blowout–Red-winged blackbirds, boat-tailed grackles; I thought I was in a salt marsh or something. They were pigging out on birdseed and making a ruckus.
Paula called me from her cell phone and told me to come to the window to see; she was in the car with the kids, and had just pulled into the driveway. They were sitting in the car, watching the mob up close and personal as they emptied the feeder. A few “rock doves” joined in, while the house sparrows watched mostly from the sidelines waiting for the crowd to thin.
We've been in this house for more than five years, and I've been in Baltimore for 11. And I don't recall seeing this many RWB's–or any grackles to speak of–inside the city before. Maybe it's the drought. Maybe we're on a migratory lay-over map somewhere posted by a crow on the bird Internet. Who knows? We appreciated the visit anyway.