Aglossa

Ce n'est pas la nouvelle année, mais c'est déjà un nouveau défi

Depuis début juillet 2006, j'assume la direction générale de Sagatel, qui a rejoint le groupe SETEC, comme filiale de Setec Telecom. Une raison de moins pour trouver le temps d'écrire une note sur cet espace public.

Quand la réalité rejoint la fiction

Après avoir vu le film récemment à la télévision, une news amusante d'un Venture Capitalist.

Anti-financial fraud outfit 41st Parameter has landed KP financing in its just-closed Series B financing. While the company's technology for online fraud detection looks spookily interesting -- it works by "continuously collecting new and unique parameters from end-user computers during online account access" -- what really caught my eye was one of the company's advisors: Frank "Catch Me If You Can" Abagnale. Yes, that Frank Abagnale, the reformed imposter and fraudster played by Leo Dicaprio in the Spielberg film of a few years ago.

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: Catch 41st Parameter If You Can

Les perspectives d'évolution du marché immobilier

Sous ce titre bien administratif, se cache un rapport d'étude au Sénat riche en chiffres et en analyses.

En lisant entre les lignes, on peut plaindre ceux qui ont acheté en 2005.

Does IT matter

Nicholas Carr est peut-être extrême dans ses généralisations. Mais il y a un fond de vérité et le besoin de fiabilité, de sécurité au sens large pour des fonctions basiques, devrait tout à fait être à l'ordre du jour des DSI.

From a practical standpoint, the most important lesson to be learned from earlier infrastructural technologies may be this: When a resource becomes essential to competition but inconsequential to strategy, the risks it creates become more important than the advantages it provides. Think of electricity. Today, no company builds its business strategy around its electricity usage, but even a brief lapse in supply can be devastating (as some California businesses discovered during the energy crisis of 2000). The operational risks associated with IT are many—technical glitches, obsolescence, service outages, unreliable vendors or partners, security breaches, even terrorism—and some have become magnified as companies have moved from tightly controlled, proprietary systems to open, shared ones. Today, an IT disruption can paralyze a company's ability to make its products, deliver its services, and connect with its customers, not to mention foul its reputation. Yet few companies have done a thorough job of identifying and tempering their vulnerabilities. Worrying about what might go wrong may not be as glamorous a job as speculating about the future, but it is a more essential job right now. HBS Working Knowledge: Technology: Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore

What is a bubble and is this one now?

Pour ceux qui comme notre famille s'interrogent sur le marché immbilier de Paris en 2005.

Many of those discussing the possibility of a housing market bubble seem to be taking Justice Potter Stewart's position on pornography-- they haven't defined a bubble, but they think they know it when they see it. Maybe it's useful to take a look at a formal characterization of the concept of a speculative bubble, and see how well it seems to fit the facts of the current situation. Econbrowser: What is a bubble and is this one now?

Lecture pour premier anniversaire de marriage

Studying marriage over the last several years has been a lot like adjusting to marriage itself. No matter how well you think you know your partner beforehand, the first years are full of surprises, not only about your spouse but also about yourself.

The Chronicle: 5/6/2005: The New Fragility of Marriage, for Better or for Worse

Une vraie mise en garde sur la sécurité des messageries

Puisque le Gartner agite un épouvantail à propos du nouveau système de messagerie de Windows Mobile:

Although the software allows administrators to remotely wipe all the information on a device, this doesn't include all the files stored on an SD or CompactFlash card.

"Wiping the devices' memory is of limited use, since data on removable media is not erased and remains exposed. Because mobile devices have limited storage capacity, most users store data on media, such as memory cards, that can simply be removed from one device and read in another," the research note says.

Via Brighthand

il faut savoir qu'il y a des outils encore plus communs et encore plus dangereux. Si vous utilisez un compte POP3 ou IMAP sans cryptage SSL (le petit cadenas qui apparaît dans votre navigateur Internet), sachez que n'importe quel collègue un peu astucieux et curieux peut lire copie des messages que vous recevez. Et si vous pouvez consulter vos messages à distance, chez vous par exemple, lui aussi.

Cette perte de confidentialité est bien plus dangereuse que la perte de son ordinateur de poche Windows parce que vous ne vous en rendez même pas compte.

Les Français multiplient les occasions de faire entendre leur différence

Here come Les Blocs
By: Nick Danger

According to C|Net, France's Commission generale de terminologie et de neologie ("the monkeys of surrender with the new words") has decided that the term "blog" is an affront to the long noses of the French people [I told you no more Babelfish -- ed.] and will henceforth be replaced in French class with the more pleasing bloc-notes.

It will be permissable, at least in France, to use the short form "bloc." And so France will soon have blocs and presumably bloceurs and bloceuses. At presstime it was not possible to determine whether bloc is a 'le' or a 'la,' which is the same problem we have always had with all French words.

The Germans, meanwhile, are expected to go the other way. They always do. Instead of coining an entirely new -- and consequently short -- word, they are expected to follow their usual practice and deem these entities komputerdailynotesgelisters.

In Brussels, the EU Ministry of Technologie reacted with alarm to this proliferation of 'blog' terms unique to each country, especially after they learned that the Poles intended to call them gzybrgrlz. The EU has consequently appointed a commission to draft a plan to hold a meeting to prepare an agenda. Officials are hopeful that a single, Europe-wide standard term can be introduced in time for the 2104 Olympics.

Via Richard Stastny (autrichien). Dans un registre plus politique, lire également les entrées suivantes de son bloc-note :

• NON and NEE to the European "Constitution"
• For the avoidance of doubt - YES to Europe
• The Art of Being Against
• Generation '68: Voting against Globalisation