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Sunday, 14 February 2010

OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy

It's 2010. And 2007 is finally here
 
Review OpenOffice 3.2 - now now available for Windows, Mac and Linux - boasts faster start-up times than before. But the really big news is that now - finally - this open-source suite offers full compatibility with files created using Microsoft's Office 2007.

If you've ever tried opening or converting .docx and other Microsoft Office 2007 file formats outside of Office 2007 itself, you've likely pounded your head against more than a few walls - downloading plug-ins or struggling with online conversion services.

That should be a thing of the past with OpenOffice 3.2, which supports all the Office 2007 formats out of the box. That said, the conversion process still isn't completely perfect, especially if you're trying for pixel-perfect document formatting or, in my testing, spreadsheets with complicated equation cells.

Of course, it's hard to be too excited about the new conversion tools given that they arrive three years after Office 2007 hit the shelves. If your business had a mission-critical need to work with Microsoft's formats let's hope you weren't holding your breath for OpenOffice to come through for you.

Is it fair to give an open-source project a hard time for taking three years to reverse engineer a document format more or less invented to make OpenOffice's life more complicated?

Well, no, but in the real world Microsoft Office is - for better or worse - the moving target OpenOffice.org must aim for - and, in this case, taking quite a while to hit.

Also on the document support front, OpenOffice 3.2 boasts improved compliance with Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2 standards as well as the ability to open password-protected Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

Given that Microsoft's preview release of Office 2010 offers support for ODF files there's some small chance that OpenOffice might actually have an easier time integrating with Microsoft's Office in the future.

The latest version of OpenOffice isn't all about format wars, though, and version 3.2 makes a worthwhile update for the considerable speed boost - especially in start up times.

It's so fast, I no longer had time to grab a fresh cup of coffee while the suite came to life. No, I double clicked the icon and - just like - that OpenOffice was ready to go. Also, I found most of the applications were somewhat snappier in general usage. The one exception seemed to be the database application, which felt sluggish in comparison - particularly with large database files.

After the speed and file format improvements, the OpenOffice release notes get very technical, very quickly. The gory details can be found on the OpenOffice site, but suffice to say that the Calc tool spreadsheet application has received quite a few improvements - such as improved copy-and-paste features - while the rest of the applications also see minor updates and bug fixes.

Time for a fluffing

However, what's perhaps most significant about this release may have nothing to do with the improved applications at all. Rather, it's the fact this will be last release before OpenOffice moves to its new owner Oracle, which finally closed its purchase of Sun Microsystems last month.

Oracle has pledged to continue OpenOffice and plans to keep the entire Sun team on hand, running OpenOffice as an independent business unit. Of course, Oracle clearly sees the online office suite as the future and plans to launch Oracle Cloud Office at some point. Whether that means OpenOffice will suffer neglect remains to be seen.

It would be nice to see Oracle do for OpenOffice what Microsoft is trying to do for its Office - integrate an online component - but do it without creating a massive vendor lock-in scheme.

Some might argue the future of office suites is all online with things like Google Docs or Zoho one day becoming the norm, but while document storage in the cloud is all well and good, editing documents in a browser is still nowhere near as pleasant or powerful as with dedicated software.

If Oracle can provide a first-rate connect-anywhere, edit-anywhere online office suite, it might have finally found something that can break Microsoft's stronghold on business productivity tools.
That's what I'd be looking for in follow on versions to OpenOffice 3.2. ®

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Saturday, 13 February 2010

Whatever Volcker wants, Volcker gets?

Volcker Rules is about separation of commercial banking functions from high-risk activities

I FIRST met Paul Volcker, 82, in the summer of 1986. He was then chairman of the US Federal Reserve System (Fed). I was a rookie Fellow of the Eisenhower Exchange Programme, whose chairman was President Gerald Ford.

Volcker was well known to me as the towering central banker (at 6ft 7in, not sure if he is the tallest economist around; late Harvard Prof Ken Galbraith was about there). He was better known as the daring but brutal inflation fighter of the late 70s and early 80s, at great cost in lost output and jobs.

He was kind to me when I visited him in his office; even gave me lunch. He was impressive, friendly and had time for a visitor (and fellow Harvard alumnus) who was completely at awe with what he does. We spent four hours together. We have since been in contact, off and on.

The Volcker Rule

Volcker is now back at centrestage, after retiring from the Fed some 20 years ago. This time, introduced as the “tall guy behind me”, President Obama proposed a “simple and common sense reform, which we are calling the ‘Volcker Rule’.” Essentially, the new bank reforms would ban proprietary trading and prevent banks from “owning, investing in and sponsoring” hedge funds or private equity ventures. The proposals are intended to curb the size and spread of the biggest US banks.

Volcker had pushed hard for such a version of the separation between commercial and investment banking, first brought into being by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, soon after the Great Depression. He considered this to be key in resolving the problem of banks getting “too big to fail” (TBTF).

Indeed, it challenges the status quo that institutionalises moral hazard and exposes governments to constant bailouts at taxpayers’ expense. Volcker wants to limit this guarantee. His proposal was first mooted more than a year ago.

The mayor and the gunslinger

Volcker’s Rule can be likened to separating a prosperous cowboy town’s operations into the mundane mayor-like activities (safe and less risky but unexciting) and the gunslinger-like operations (indulging in taking undue risks and speculation, e.g. credit default swaps or CDSs), including proprietary trading for own profit, quite unrelated to serving their customers.

This Rule would provide government backing for the unexciting but safe town-mayors, but not to the speculative gunslingers. Thus, getting banks out of the gunslingers’ business would eliminate the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers from holding government hostage – a moral hazard every time. These gunslingers should be allowed to fail.

Volcker rationalised that banks are sheltered by the government because providing credit is critical to economic growth. As such, they should be prevented from taking advantage of the safety net to make risky investments. For Volcker, banks are there to serve the public and that’s what they should do. Other activities can create conflicts of interest. They create unnecessary risks.

Wide ranging support

Once called “big nanny” by Walter Wriston (chairman of Citicorp in the 70s and 80s), Volcker has a towering reputation worldwide. “He is brilliant, eminently logical and steadfastly devoted to his work,” said D. Rockefeller (Volcker’s boss in the late 50s). According to an old friend, Gerry Corrigan (New York Fed president when Volcker was Fed chief), whenever Volcker was criticised, he never “flinched” simply because “he’s a man of utter conviction and absolute integrity.”

That’s why Volcker’s ideas are widely respected. European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet offered qualified support: it goes “in the same direction of our own position”. Along the way, he picked up other allies – notably John Reed (former chairman, Citicorp) and Stanley Fischer (ex-deputy CEO, International Monetary Fund or IMF).

Support has also come from chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the new president of the Swiss National Bank, and France’s Finance Minister: “It is a very, very good step forward.”

Mervyn King (governor, Bank of England) had been an early campaigner of a similar proposal to resolve the TBTF problem: “After you ring-fence retail deposits, the statement that no one else get bailed out becomes credible…That is the argument for trying to create firewalls.”

His version goes further than Volcker’s: He wants government to break up the big banks into “utilities” and “casinos” – the former are safe, the latter to live and die in the markets.

There is, of course, support from Prof J. Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Laureate in economics): “Banks that are too big to fail are too big to exist…That means breaking up too-important-to-fail (or too-complex-to-fix) institutions.” The latest being Harvard Prof N. Ferguson: “So far, there is only one credible proposal.” Since then, George Soros has also come on board.

Deciphering the Volcker Rule

The United States desperately needs financial reform. Ironically, as a result of massive government support, banks as a whole are now doing reasonably well. This contrast of strong finance and a weak jobless economy in the early stages of recovery makes the politics of reform easy to understand. But, unemployment looms large.

Voters in the United States feel betrayed by the banks and want to feel that their anger has been heard. Yet, voters cannot be sold on technicalities. The Volcker Rule (VR) has concerns in controversial technicalities.

The best insight I have read in deciphering the VR is provided by two of the London Financial Times’ best economic columnists, Martin Wolf and John Gapper. I have respect for Wolf, whom I have met occasionally at seminars run by Harvard’s Marty Feldstein at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Wolf raises three pertinent questions: are Volcker’s proposals desirable, workable and relevant?

Desirable? Of course. Surely, banks should not be allowed to exploit the government’s “guarantee” to make speculative investments with little economic benefits. The very idea of banks profiteering from activities from whose consequences they had to be rescued and of whose impact the public is still suffering, is despicable. Nevertheless, Wolf thinks the VR is not the best way to go.

Workable? Here many doubts arise. Where do you draw the line (and police it) between legitimate bank activities and activities “unrelated to serving their customers”. Various technical considerations begin to blur the line. Further, how is bank size to be measured? Definition technicalities get more complicated.

Relevant? Wolf argues persuasively that vast affiliated parts of the financial system which have evolved from deposit-taking are vital; and indeed represent well-coordinated component parts of the entire system. These have become so interconnected that the system operates as one integral whole. Then, there is “shadow” banking (institutions with promises to repay liabilities on demand), which is vulnerable to a “run” as well. The list extends to money market funds, finance companies, structured investment houses, securities dealers, etc.

Surely, this chain of shadow institutions can’t be ignored in any reform exercise. Ironically, during the crisis, banks’ investments in hedge funds, private equity and even proprietary trading were not at the “core” which went terribly wrong.

Gapper argues that “Volcker has the measure of the banks.” For the first time, he states: “A government is attacking the size and complexity of the over-mighty institutions.” Impractical? No way. Hedge funds and private equity can be readily hived off from banks with access to the Fed window and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp insurance.

Granted, the definition of proprietary trading can be technically tricky. But, in reality, banks know what a proprietary desk is. Indeed, Volcker assured US Congress that “bankers know what proprietary trading is and is not. Don’t let them tell you different…I don’t think it’s so hard.” He emphasised: “What I want to get out of the system is taxpayer support for speculative activity.”

Gapper didn’t think much of Wolf’s idea that the VR would not fit outside the United States where Europeans are not only wedded to the universal bank model but love big banks. Hence, there will be difficulties in international coordination of regulation. This is an over-reaction.

Gapper argues that the VR does not prevent the investment houses from – indeed, they are already taking – big risks. What is important is for the US system to be reformed and made stable. The VR would not curb innovation or stop hedge funds and private equity from making money. Curbs on very large financial institutions are compatible with – indeed, can stimulate – a thriving and stable financial system.

It is noteworthy that Volcker himself concedes that the proposals would not have prevented the debacles at American International Group and Lehman at the heart of the 2008 crisis. But he stated emphatically that not adopting the proposals would surely “lead to another crisis in the future”.

Can big banks really walk alone?

Both Wolf and Gapper agree that the VR is not perfect – its implementation needs sharpening. As I see it, serious bank reform is a global problem. Other central banks should offer ideas. It’s worth trying to forge reform that is smart and practical. Lest we forget, contagion risk and counterparty failure globally have been the main hallmarks of the crisis.

Human nature being what it is, I don’t think we have seen the last of “gung ho” traders and their quants who just want to drive profits. Right now such activity is already back to up profits in some big banks. Since we don’t (and won’t) really learn, the separation of commercial banking functions from such high-risk activities is what the VR is all about.

I gather that OECD (a developed nations group) has also been looking at options. One concerns structuring systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) under a variant of non-operating holding companies on a global basis, as follows:

(i) Parent is non-operational – only raises capital and invests transparently in legally separate SIFIs;

(ii) Profits are flowed-up through parent to shareholders;

 (iii) Parent not allowed to shift capital among subsidiaries in crisis and can’t request special dividends to do so. Such a structure allows for the separation of prudential risks and use of capital. In this way, regulators and investors can spot potential weaknesses. It creates a non-subsiding environment for the riskier business;

(iv) In the event of failure, the regulator shuts it down without affecting its commercial banking sister – obviating the need for even “living wills”. This offers an innovative, transparent way to achieve globally what both Volcker and King wanted but without being extreme.

Whatever the final outcome, a right balance needs to be struck between an appropriate size that’s conducive to benefit from purposeful diversification, and strong global competition to meet sustainable consumer demands at reasonable cost.

In the end, realistically, I can’t see how the VR or its variants, including what the OECD is working on, can really prevent another crisis, human nature being what it is. History is full of repeats where “greed” eventually overwhelms prudence and common sense.

Nevertheless, it could make one less likely, less often (we have had one every three years), and less costly if it did occur. To this, I think Churchill would have added: such a measure would make finance less proud but the industry more content.

Source: ● Former banker, Dr Lin is a Harvard educated economist and a British Chartered Scientist who now spends time promoting public interest. Feedback is most welcome; email:
starbizweek@thestar.com.my.


Obama fixes date for Dalai Lama


The Chinese government has branded the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader a separatist [Reuters]
The US president will meet the Dalai Lama in Washington next week, the White House has said, ignoring strong protests from Beijing to withdraw the invitation.

China, which had already warned that any meeting could hurt already-strained relations between the two countries, quickly reiterated its call for the meeting not to go ahead.

In a statement on Thursday White House spokesman Robert Gibbs confirmed that Barack Obama would meet the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader on February 18.

"The Dalai Lama is an internationally respected religious leader. He's a spokesman for Tibetan rights," Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said on Thursday.
"The president looks forward to an engaging and constructive meeting."

In a possible nod to Chinese sensitivities the meeting is scheduled to take place in the White House Map Room, and not the symbolic surroundings of the Oval Office, where Obama normally meets foreign dignitaries.

'High sensitivity'

It is unclear as yet if Obama and the Dalai Lama, branded a separatist by the Chinese government, would meet in the open or behind closed doors.


"China urges the US... to immediately call off the wrong decision of arranging for President Obama to meet with the Dalai Lama... to avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations"
Ma Zhaoxu, China foreign ministry spokeman
Hours after the White House announcement, China's foreign ministry lodged a formal protest urging the US to immediately withdraw the decision. "We firmly oppose the Dalai Lama visiting the United States and US leaders having contact with him," Ma Zhaoxu, a ministry spokesman, said in a statement.

"We urge the US side to fully understand the high sensitivity of Tibet-related issues, and honour its commitment to recognise Tibet as part of China and to oppose 'Tibet independence'," he said.

He added that the meeting was a "wrong decision" and said it should be called off "to avoid any more damage to Sino-US relations".

The 74-year-old monk fled his Tibet homeland to exile in India in 1959, after a failed uprising against Beijing rule some nine years after Chinese troops were sent to take control of the region.

Strained ties

Obama avoided meeting the Dalai Lama when he visited Washington last year.

However in November the US president had warned Chinese leaders on a visit to Beijing of his intention to meet the exiled Tibetan leader.

Next week's meeting comes at a time when China-US ties have become strained over several issues, including a $6.4bn arms sale to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing claims as its own.

Relations have also been strained over internet censorship, with search giant Google Inc threatening to shut down its China business following what it said were cyber-attacks against the email accounts of rights activists.

Friday, 12 February 2010

10 Reasons Why a Google Fiber Network Could Reshape the ISP Landscape

News Analysis: Google announced recently that it plans to deliver a fiber network capable of delivering 1Gbps Web speeds. That's no small feat. The impact it could have on both the Internet and the tech industry as a whole cannot be understated. It could force changes in the entire U.S. ISP market, depending on whether Google eventually commits to widely deploying this 1Gbps network.

Google announced on Wednesday that it plans to deliver up to 1Gbps Web speeds to 50,000 people across the United States as part of an experiment to gauge the quality of next-generation apps, the viability of "new deployment techniques," and interest in "openness." Google might even ramp up availability to over 500,000 people in the U.S.

Google's announcement has sent shockwaves through the tech community. Just how much does Google plan to invest in its new fiber-optic deployment? How will major ISPs respond to the news? And perhaps most importantly, how will it impact the telecommunications industry? At this point, Google's exact intentions are unknown. But it could have a profound effect on the tech industry.
 

Zahrain still chairman of IGP


GEORGE TOWN: Bayan Baru MP Datuk Seri Zahrain Mohd Hashim, who has been critical of Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, has not been sacked as the chairman of Island Golf Properties Bhd (IGP).

Lim said Zahrain was still chairman of the Penang Development Corporation (PDC) subsidiary “at the present moment.”

“PDC has informed me that no letter has been sent by either PDC or Island Golf Properties to any director of Island Golf Properties on any changes,” Lim said in a statement here yesterday.

He said Zahrain had been chairman and director of Island Golf Properties since July 9, 2008.

Zahrain claimed yesterday that he had been sacked as IGP chairman.

“Zahrain’s statement is a pack of lies,” Lim said.

Lim added that the PDC, which owns BJCC via its subsidiary Island Golf Properties Berhad, had decided to award the tender of managing BJCC to an experienced company valued at more than RM40mil.

Full details of the tender would be published after Chinese New Year in accordance with the state’s principles of Competency, Accountability and Transparency (CAT), Lim said.

He said certain actions and claims by Zahrain on IGP had compelled PDC to monitor it closely to ensure the company was run with the public interest at heart.

“PDC is concerned at how Zahrain is leading the IGP, when he and IGP recommended on Jan 12 last year that the operations of BJCC be outsourced and awarded to a company with a paid-up capital of RM2.

“To allow a RM2 firm to run BJCC, which involves expenditure involving millions of ringgit, makes a mockery of the open tender system. The company has no track record in running a golf club,” Lim said.

When contacted, Zahrain said: “If they have not sacked me so be it, but the issue is not about me but Lim’s arrogance and his dictatorial style in managing the state. I have reprimanded him, yet he remains stubborn.”

On the tender issue, Zahrain clarified that he only chaired board meetings.

“I don’t interfere with its daily operations. I am only paid allowances for the meetings. I have no hidden agenda, and to be accused of trying to push through a RM2 company is a fabrication. They are trying various ways to boot me out.

“I criticised Lim because I have the interests of PKR and the people at heart. Nothing more and nothing less,” Zahrain said.

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BJCC Golf and Country Club News