I read Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut yesterday as research for something I’m thinking of writing about leadership. I was looking for what he thinks leadership is. Man, is “leadership” a squirrely concept! And, I’m pretty sure, corrupt – not in the taking-bribes sense but in the been-used-so-often-it-now-means-18-contradictory-things sense. It’s not even clear how to separate leaders from leadership: it’s perfectly possibly to have leaders who don’t exhibit leadership, and there can be people with leadership who have no followers. Leadership seems to be some set of idealized personal traits that have their own independent life.

We have teachers but no teachership. Librarians with no librarianship. Followers with no followship. Why do we need leadership?

My head’s a-swirl. [Tags: leadership business jack_welch ]

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David Pogue’s Missing Manual for OS X is just about perfect. It’s packed with explanations at the right level of specificity and generality – some of us like to have a mental model as well as step-by-step procedures – and it’s fun to read. In fact, I’ve been enjoying reading through it sequentially. Well done, suh!

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I’ve used and owned Macs since they were the Lisa, but they’ve never really gripped me. My new MacBook has. It’s a keeper, and I’m not sure I can tell you why any more than I could tell you why the previous didn’t take. I’m bonding with it even as we speak.

Now, having said that, let me tell you about the weird problems I’m having with it.

Thanks to your help, I got my terminal back running (it was a pfile problem). Now I have a new and more entertaining problem.

I noticed that some of the extra apps that had been on my disk were no longer there. E.g., GarageBand was gone, so was Process Manager, and maybe some more. So, I backed up to an external drive (SuperDuper, totally worth the $27) and reinstalled the apps (and only the apps) from my Apple CD’s. All seemed to go well, except when I rebooted, about two seconds after the desktop appeared, the desktop went up a couple of pixels in resolution. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it was enough to throw off the sharpness of on-screen type. Weirder, the screen shifted left those few pixels if I moved my mouse to the left, up if I moved my mouse up, etc. This happened even if I made small motions with my mouse in the middle of the screen; I didn’t have to go skating to the edge. Weird.

Here’s what’s probably a crucial clue: My official Apple CD’s are version 10.4.09, whereas the version of the OS installed on my hard drive is 10.4.10. Just to be very clear: My MacBook came with 10.4.10 installed, but with 10.4.09 CDs.

So, I reinstalled the OS, and not just the extra apps, from the CD’s, thinking maybe it was an incompatibility between the apps and the OS. Everything was fine except I had the same resolution problem. So, I restored from the system backup I had done. And all is well. No resolution problem. No screen shifting with the mouse problem. Of course, I still don’t have those extra apps, but I can live without them until I can get my hands on a 10.4.10 CD set…or until one of you figures out what the heck is going on.

Interesting, eh? Or maybe it’s so obvious to you that it’s not interesting…

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This is a rich exchange between Chris Lydon and Steve Antinoff.

This is a powerful piece by Britt on the ordinary and the extraordinary,

Here, again, is the video of Clay Shirky’s extraordinary talk on the Web of love.

The blogosphere is a blessing…

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Her name is, famously, an anagram of “silvery bells.”

Rest in peace…but not in quiet.

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People seem to like the Speck case for the MacBook, but there are some worrisome reviews at Amazon about dust getting trapped and scratching the MB, and about the difficulty of removing the case without scratching the MB.

Granted that there are bigger problems in the world: Nevertheless, do you have a recommendation for a shell for the MB to protect it from the harsh winds of time?

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As my Thinkpad X40 starts to fall apart — it’s 18 months old, which is about how long my laptops last, and already has bits held on by duct tape — I’m thinking about getting either a MacBook or a 15″ MacBook Pro. The Pro has the power I crave, but it’s sooo much bigger than the X40. Since I use my laptop purely for travel, if you own a Pro, do you find you can use it on a plane (in coach)? Or do you end up doing the inverted paw flip so that you end up typing by drumming on your stomach?

In short, isn’t the Pro just too damn big for airplane travel?

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You know the people who wander through airline terminals, looking at the bases of walls, hunting for a previous power outlet into which they can sink their electric teeth?

Perhaps we should call them ampires. [Tags: neologisms]

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Susan Crawford has posted the op-ed that ought to be read and adopted by every candidate for president who cares about the Internet. She slaps down the FCC for asking the wrong questions and puts forward the right change that we’ve generally been too timid (exception: David Isenberg) to put forward: Require the carriers to open themselves up to genuine competition, and confine carriers of bits to carrying bits:

The duopoly is something like Shamu and Godzilla on hire for televised wrestling – giant beasts gently swatting at one another for the cameras.

The solution? Require

that all providers sell unfettered transport services at wholesale rates into a competitive market for retail transport. Even better, Congress should take the reins and demand that the duopolies divest themselves of their transport services so that they aren’t tempted to try to monetize internet access in favor of their own movies and phone services.

This piece is a great expression of the real problem and a call to arms for the real solution.

It is also further evidence that Susan ought to be our next FCC Commissioner. [Tags: susan_crawford fcc net_neutrality ]

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Russell Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason, has posted a podcast interview with me about Everything is Miscellaneous. (Fortunately, he doesn’t ask me anything that requires my knowing anything about economics.)

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