Many thanks to Jim Leonard, Krista Summitt, Mitch Ratcliffe and others who volunteered advice and referrals on getting over this sciatica attack.
I’m a lot better than I was last week. Still a bit creaky, but the real nasty pain is gone, and I can bear to sit in a plane or car seat. Productivity has returned.
Now to get a full night’s sleep
Lunch over IP: The natural history of the @ sign
Reading Bruno Giussani is a delight. This history of the “@” or “at” sign is a keeper. Bruno is my favorite Swiss blogger and info theory blogger out there.
“The precise birth date of e-mail is unknown, but technology historians set it somewhere in late 1971, when a then 30-year old American computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson, did what he unassuming calls “a quick hack”. He successfully sent the first electronic message from a computer to an account (his own account, in fact) on another computer.”
China’s First Global Capitalist
“What’s it like to work with the Chinese?” is the top question thrown my way the past 11 months. BusinessWeek helps me answer it with a profile of our chairman, Yang Yangqing.
“Yang Yuanqing, 42, chairman of Lenovo Group Ltd., the leading PC company in China, steps into the Ding Hao Electronics Mall and a dizzying scene. Everywhere there are signs, lights, and swarms of shoppers. Strolling from one shop to another to peruse the displays of his company’s devices, Yang, introduced by his handlers, speaks quietly with shopkeepers. But each time he stops, he is immediately surrounded by a scrum of people giddily snapping his picture with tiny digital cameras and camera phones. Yang is a rock-star executive here, a Chinese Bill Gates.”
I’ll post in the future about my impressions of Lenovo’s culture and leadership. I’ve had a few interactions with Yangqing and have found him remarkably thoughtful and decisive — a guy who projects immense patience and attention to execution. He is not a larger-than-life type of manager who plays into the old PC industry’s adoration for what Jim Manzi at Lotus once called the “Cult of Personality.”
